The naked selfies being shared on instant messaging applications include a number of photos of underage girls, the Cyber Crimes Unit has confirmed.
In an interview on the television programme Times Talk last night, Inspector Timothy Zammit, who heads the unit, said the police were aware of a number of “pornographic” photos of minors being shared online.
Two depicted underage Maltese girls
“According to the information we have, some of these photos are of underage persons. In this case, simply possessing the images is a crime,” he said, adding this would constitute the possession of child pornography, a crime punishable by a maximum of three years in prison.
Naked selfies sent ripples through the online community this month after instant messaging applications were flooded with the compromising images.
Insp. Zammit said the sharing of nude photos, including those depicting minors, had already been investigated by the police.
“Last year the Cyber Crimes Unit investigated 12 cases of nude images, two of which depicted underage Maltese girls,” he said.
One such image of a Maltese minor shows a teenage girl posing in her bathroom and is believed to have first been leaked by the girl’s ex-boyfriend; the original recipient of the photo.
Nude selfies were not the only X-rated images being investigated. Insp. Zammit said the police had also probed a number of videos in which young women are seen stripping and performing sexual acts.
While most of the videos had simply been shared on social platforms, some had been used as leverage in attempts to blackmail the young women, he said.
“They are persuaded to expose themselves on webcams and some of them are even blackmailed. They were told that if they didn’t pay a certain sum of money, the images would be circulated,” he said, adding that this was normally done by foreign blackmailers on dating sites and video chat rooms.
The sharing of naked selfies, on the other hand, was mostly done by Maltese.
Insp. Zammit said the police had received about 10 reports of nakies in recent weeks. Despite the reports, the police are powerless against the widespread sharing occurring on instant messaging applications.
Police sources confirmed that the authorities were unable to intercept the images on applications like WhatsApp Messenger.
“The only authority empowered to intercept such messages is the Malta secret service, which would do so in the interest of national security, not for the sharing of nude photos,” the sources said.
Despite this, Insp. Zammit said some people had been arrested over the distribution of pornographic images in recent months, adding that a number had also been arraigned in court.
Last week a French photographer was given a suspended sentence after pleading guilty to uploading footage on the internet of him engaging in sexual activities with a Maltese male model.
Police have also questioned another man in relation to the online publication of another video portraying a Maltese woman engaged in consensual oral sex.