JEDDAH, 14 March 2004 — Authorities have intensified the crackdown on illegal mobile camera phones.

Mobile retail outlets across the Kingdom are being searched by representatives from the Interior Ministry and phones are confiscated. The authorities plan to re-export the collected devices and compensate shop owners with the profits, according to Al-Watan newspaper.

Arab News surveyed a number of mobile retail outlets to find that the popular phones were still on sale — but not on the outlet’s premises.

“When a customer asks for one of the phones, the vendor will usually send a friend to get one from a car parked outside,” said Ahmad, 29, who works across from a mobile phone stand in a Jeddah shopping center. “It is sold without warranty. Accessories for the phones are openly sold in most places.”

Ben Hardy, a British expatriate, is having difficulty finding a high-tech phone without a built-in camera.

“All I need is a phone with a Bluetooth feature,” he said. “I’m aware of the ban, but the only phones (without a camera) I can find are used, or from substandard brands.”

The crackdown comes after numerous newspaper reports of female students being expelled from schools and universities for using the phones to photograph other girls, including an incident last year when a teacher caught six girls taking shots of others during class at an all-girl college in Dammam.

The school administration confiscated the phones, which had been purchased in Bahrain, and forced the girls to sign a pledge not to repeat the act.

The phones were banned in September 2002 at the urging of the chief of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice following reports that they were being used by some men to secretly photograph women.

But that has not stopped the phones from being sold.

The controversial phones are being bought from neighboring Gulf countries and sold for up to double their original price.

The popular Nokia model sold in Europe for close to SR2,000 sells for as much as SR3,000 in the Kingdom, with a black-market resale value of SR1,000, making it popular among thieves.