FOI Request Reveals UK Houses of Parliament Workers' Passion For Adult Content

Anita Hunt (lissnup) writes "Hot on the heels of Dave Cameron's demands to make such content universally 'opt-in,' the Independent reports 'Westminster computers were prevented from accessing sex sites 114,844 times last November alone and on 55,552 in April, while February saw just 15 and in June officials blocked 397 attempts.' No explanation has been offered for the variation, although it would be interesting to know if the fall in the number of recorded/reported attempts coincides with the date the FOI request was filed."

Comments

Re:Let me guess...

[Goose In Orbit]

Dissing the 52nd State.... isn't that classed as Treason yet?

Bogus.

[serviscope_minor]

Those figures look bogus.

One month has 114,000 accesses, another month just 15.

I'm suspicious of those figures.

Of course, I do still expect that they are a bunch of porn hounds.

Re:Bogus.

[X0563511]

Smells like a virus or malware could have ballooned those large figures.

Re:Bogus.

[hairyfeet]

Boy ain't that the truth! I did a 6 month temp job at a hospital once and one of my jobs was to show nurses how to beat the porn filters! It turned out the PHB who had bought the crap (at an insane markup over a martini lunch from what the rumor mill said) refused to even entertain the thought that his software might be shit but the stupid software would block ANYTHING to do with words like breast or prostrate no matter how many times the IT guys told the stupid software not to, kinda a problem when you have a large part of the hospital dealing with cancer. So I got to go out each morning and show the noobs how to blow past all the filters that the PHB paid insane money to put up, the wonders that is corporate bullshit.

Re:Bogus.

[Geoffrey.landis]

Having seem what sites get blocked, I'll agree with "bogus".

For a long time I couldn't get to the JPL Mars Exploration website, because of three letters in the middle of its URL (which used to be marsexploration.jpl.nasa.gov).

And as for trying to access the old physics preprint server (since renamed to ArXiv): xxx.lanl.gov -- forget it.
(I hate to say what autocorrect just tried to corect "lanl" to...)

Re:Bogus.

[robthebloke]

or, the conservative party.

Re:Bogus.

[jonbryce]

They had major problems with their filters when the Sexual Offences Act was being debated in parliament.

Use some logic and it might make sense.

[intermodal]

First off, the definition of "sex site" is always questionable in this kind of situation, especially a workplace. Second, an infected computer is a pretty effective way to "hit" a lot of porn in a short period of time, at least as network monitors would count them. Third, it's been several months, meaning any number of variables could have changed that would significantly change the quantity of "hits".

It feels silly to count "hits" in this day and age. I'd better stop reading this thread before I get nostalgic for the days when I got to hate Geocities.

Re:Use some logic and it might make sense.

[hairyfeet]

You are correct in all counts, I would only add that there is a major source of infection that most geeks around here probably don't even think of that could seriously tilt those numbers...USB drives and sticks.

Working in a little shop I tend to get exposed to more hardware than most and can see trends emerging and in the past few years the number of cheap flash sticks infected with clickjackers and other bugs have frankly gone right through the roof. Since they can no longer count on autorun they instead disguise themselves as "value added" software on the drive, drive security software, free movie players, stuff like that. Many of these bugs are clickjacker variants which for those that have never encountered one are used to commit ad fraud by driving up hits to websites, many of which are porn sites. With a clickjacker you'll see page hits suddenly explode, I have seen clickjackers that would cause hundreds of new windows to open within seconds, talk about dragging a machine to a screeching halt.

So just going by the data we have here, with the number of hits going from over 10,000 to less than a hundred? Sounds like somebody let a clickjacker loose on their network. Feel sorry for the IT guy if that was the case, the new clickjackers are nasty little buggers and pretty damned hard to kill without just wiping everything and starting over. I hope they had a really solid backup strategy in place if that were the case, otherwise talk about a nightmare.

people wised up

[themushroom]

and started looking for those nudes of Kate from their home machines.

Whew!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> FOI Request Reveals UK Houses of Parliament Workers' Passion For Adult Content

OH THANK GOD, they're normal human beings.

Re:Whew!

[GodfatherofSoul]

I hope it's not normal to browse porn sites at work. Ewww.

Hypocrisy in Government?

[bmo]

No, say it isn't so!

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1996-01-23/

To update it to today, "So you're pitting your intelligence against the collective sex drive of everyone?"

--
BMO

It only makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

If everyone's allowed to look at porn, then you, who writes the laws, are not superior for you are not above them but standing alongside them.
Just like the catholic church wants no one else diddling little boys, the republicans want no other men having sex with college boys, the UK government wants to be the only ones around able to download titties.

All of those initiatives to ban things for "morality" only ever come down to a single thing: "Because I want to be more special than you are"

Possibly normal web filter catches.

[Technician]

We have a no porn policy posted at work as part of the hostile work environment compliance. We have a corporate filter with a splash page providing warnings. Policy does acknowledge the occasional mis-directed web page, bad search result, ads for adult content or products. Even Slashdot provided some warning pages due to some troll links that are NSFW.

Even though I have never searched for Adult content at work, I get the splash several times a week. Sometimes several ads on an otherwise normal page have shrunken warning splash screens so based on counts alone, normal web activity including surfing Slashdot is good for several hits to several 10's of hits on a Adult or other restricted site link. Hacking is the other big reason I see the warning page, but the description given for the reason the site is blocked is for hacking. When I follow info following Defcon talks often provides prohibited advertisements or articles or "Hacking" websites.

If you are not on a corporate filter/proxy, then you may not realise how easy it is to add to these counters without even trying.

From the Government that wants to filter the UKNet

[Anonymous Coward]

I posted this elsewhere too...

Government Spokesperson said: "We do not consider the data to provide an accurate representation of the number of purposeful requests made by network users. [There are a] variety of ways in which websites can be designed to act, react and interact and due to the potential operation of third party software."

So they admit that their own statistics for their own filtering software are probably junk, and yet theyre happy to propose filtering and blocking on ALL of us {UK} because of some statistics about protecting children and the harm of pron.

"Some parliamentary staffers also hit back at the claims, blaming overzealous smut filters for mis-classifying innocent websites: The problem with the Porn Story Parliament Computers thing is that sometimes PICTs filter blocks news stories as pornographic"

Our elected representatives are researching news of the day on a filtered connection that may or may not be providing them with the full range of results. Then they decide if theyre going to be bothered to vote on a motion that they may or may not be fully informed about?

And they wonder why those of us with a least a passing interest and knowledge of how the series of connected tubes works, are telling them that the proposed new laws are a disaster?