Aptly Named Websites

20 June 2006

Article 12.
“No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.”

This is how the story goes… Aisha has seen Ahmed a lot but has never really gotten to know him but one day the opportunity presented itself and they got to know each other and went out on a date as well. As most people do these days, they immediately exchanged emails and started chatting online. It’s on one of these occasions that Aisha put a picture of herself on her DP and Ahmed wanted to see the whole picture as the DP only showed only part of it. Since Aisha had already gotten to know him a bit by then and he seemed nice enough, she did not think twice about sending it to him as a file. Big mistake.

The very next day, it became clear while chatting that Ahmed was only interested in Aisha because he had thought she would be an easy catch and since she had refused his advances towards sex he was no longer interested in her. His calls become rare
and he starts becoming very busy all of a sudden and so Aisha decides to end it right there. After all, there is no shortage of jerks in Male. However, for some reason, he gets offended when Aisha breaks up with him.

Three weeks later, Aisha finds her picture on one of the most notorious and aptly named online forums in Male’ (the name which translated into English means “a great big nuisance”, but that’s putting it mildly), with a caption proclaiming that she was easily and readily available for whoever wanted her for whatever they wanted. Along with the caption they had also posted her email address and mobile number as well. Not surprisingly she starts getting calls from strange men and people start adding her to their MSN contacts so much she has to eventually change her number and email. Sounds familiar? If not, then you must have been living under a rock.

Unfortunately, this is not a rare case; there are many victims of these photo abusers and the number increases daily. Worse, there doesn’t seem to be anything anyone can do about it. Many a boyfriend has tried to crash or hack such sites when their significant other’s picture appears there and somehow, these websites always keep coming back.

It seems that people actually want these sites up and running. Why? For their own sick twisted pleasure? Who knows, but the point is when you look at the number of hits and members the forum gets, the numbers speak for themselves. Some who defend such sites claim that if the girls whose pictures end up on the forum are shameless enough to be photographed naked or doing sexual deeds, then they have no right to be angry about it. The logic and morality of that argument can become a never ending argument but the fact remains that it is not only those who have chosen to take nude pictures of themselves or even ‘hotter’ photographs that end up on the forum. You could be out walking on the road on your way to school when some of the so-called ‘photographers’ for the site takes your picture and uploads it.

You could be eating at a restaurant, feeding a baby, just out strolling or out on a balcony. In fact, it doesn’t matter what you are doing, as long as you are out of the privacy of your own house or room then you are a potential target. And even if you are at home or in another place you consider to be safe, the real truth is that you can never be safe because with the invention of mobile phones and super tiny 5 Megapixel cameras that can take high definition pictures, sometimes even in extremely poor light, the digital Peeping Toms could be watching you anywhere. It’s not just your MSN Display Pic that can be stolen.

Why isn’t there a law to protect the victims in such cases? Should they simply fume about and just try to let it go because there is obviously nothing they can do about it? However, the amount of damage, psychological as well as social, this can do to a person is also something one has to take into consideration. Fathun, whose picture was on a forum such as this says that she could not sleep for several nights just thinking about the amount of people who would visit these sites and look at her picture. She got so many unknown calls from strangers asking for disgusting sexual favours and saying rude stuff that she decided to change her
SIM.

“I just wanted to do something about it, but there was nothing I could do. No one could help me although most people knew who runs the forum and who had put up the picture,” she says. An official of the Maldives Police Services commented that they did not get a lot of complaints regarding stolen photos being uploaded on websites. And on the few occasions that complaints are filed they do investigate the matter and try to bring the perpetrators to justice. He also said that just because someone’s picture was posted on the internet didn’t mean they would investigate it. It was only when a complaint was filed that they took action. He noted that even very recently such a case had been investigated and the perpetrator had been captured and the case sent to the Attorney Generals’ office. So from such comments it is evident that most of the general public is not aware that help was at hand. Exposure of such cases in the media can be invaluable bringing it to the public’s attention and giving those who run such websites a cause for concern.

Privacy is obviously something these perverts and voyeurs have never heard of. This invasion of privacy is something that cannot be tolerated. The amount of degrading comments left on such sites are disturbing to say the least and gives a clear idea what sort of people frequent such sites.

The issue is not about a single picture or a single person. It is bigger than that. If even the Police treats the issue as an individual case and investigates only the complaint in question then there is no hope of putting a stop to it. Of course, since we are talking about the internet, there is no way that anyone can censor what is being posted there. But if we were to treat such behaviour as cases of sexual harassment and prosecute those who commit such crimes under the law and also run awareness programs such as those being already shown on TV and are heard on the radio then we could very well be taking a positive step towards stopping such behaviour in our society.

The Right to Privacy is a fundamental human right recognized in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the International Convenant on Civil and Political Rights and in many other international and regional treaties. So how come our rights are being trampled upon and there are no protests about this? Certainly this falls under these rights as such websites and forums are definitely endorsing sexual harassment by attacking a person’s honour and reputation as well as their right to privacy.