Online porn searched by Parliament staff more than 24,000 times

https://www.theweek.co.uk/90806/parliamentary-staff-try-to-access-porn-every-nine-minutes

by DanBC • 7 years ago

29 24 7 years ago

random8785• 7 years ago

I read through this article, plus the ones linked in it, but there's very little information regarding what is actually blocked.

It's says porn in the title, but there is frequent reference to blocking 'adult content'. In this regard 'adult content' can be a very wide net. Sometimes blocking things which are not 'adult content' at all...

The Guardian article contains quotes which[1][2] raise my suspicions about the validity of this issue. I'm not an expert, but surely for such a large amount of users (plus, what I'd imagine is an easily accessed guest WiFi) the amount of block access attempts isn't that high?

Aside from that, why should I care that someone looks at (shock! horror!) 'adult content' on their phone? I'm surprised that this puritan attitude to pornography still persists. I also thought we progressed beyond the whole sex lives of politicians nonsense too.

[1] "A parliamentary spokesman said of the figures: “All pornographic websites are blocked by parliament’s computer network. The vast majority of attempts to access them are not deliberate. The data shows requests to access websites, not visits to them."

[2] “There are 8,500 computers on the parliamentary network, which are used by MPs, peers, their staff and staff of both Houses. This data also covers personal devices used when logged on to parliament’s guest wifi.”

viraptor• 7 years ago

The vast majority of attempts to access them are not deliberate.

What does that even mean? The only cases I can think of are: an ad loaded from a site which is not blocked, and a legit typo. (like ripe.com was a porn site in the past, when I meant ripe.net) But "vast majority" sounds really unlikely...

dagw• 7 years ago

We have some sort of filtering software here at work and I bump into into it quite regularly just following links to/from random tech blogs. The error rate on these filters is pretty huge. Although it also filters for all kinds of 'illegal' sites/content and not just porn.

random8785• 7 years ago

My experience mirrors that of dagw who also replied. I have experience of accessing the internet via hospital and military systems and there is little sophistication to what they block. On the other hand, access via my university accounts seems completely unrestricted (although I'm sure it's monitored).

An example I read the other day was of a woman who had a new phone account locked down for 'adult content' as per new rules. She was complaining that it was flagging things like mumsnet as adult content.

NeedMoreTea2• 7 years ago

Mobile networks in the UK will, unless you ask and show ID, default to blocking "adult" content - ostensibly brought in for porn. This is schizophrenic at best, verging on brain-dead/bananas most of the time.

Porn sites are blocked as you'd expect. It's rare to end up on one of those unintentionally, barring typos / odd results in search. But...

archive.org is blocked. VPN companies were blocked until very recently - but not VPN endpoints. Image hosting sites are blocked on a coin flip - deviantart is blocked, imgur fine - both seem to have a similar level of adult content, the rest seem to be 50:50. Reddit, including any and all 18+ subreddits, and reddit image hosting are fine... So it goes on. It just discredits the whole process.

I bump into it far more often than I'd ever have predicted, and get annoyed by it regularly - yet I have never once, in a decade of mobile net use, tried to get knowingly to pornhub or whatever. Mobile phones are too small for porn. :)

DanBC• 7 years ago

There's a couple of reasons to care about people accessing pornography while at Westminster.

1) There's a long running problem of absue and harassment at Westminster. Staff describe abusers viewing porn in front of them, or sending them porn.

2) They're at work, and they're paid from public funds. They're always banging on about "efficiency" in other workplaces (education, healthcare, law-enforcement) so the hypocrisy is a bit hard to take.

nashashmi• 7 years ago

If it's about efficiency, every activity is an issue, from shopping online to reading news.

frostwhale• 7 years ago

I also believe that Parliment outlawed porn / made it more difficult to access recently.

random8785• 7 years ago

1) That's an absurd leap to equate porn viewing with being an abuser. Perfect example of the puritan mindset that is very out of date.

Correction - there have been isolated, but high-profile, instances of abuse and harassment at Westminster. Same as pretty much every industry.

2) As I mentioned, the figures are suspect. Sure, there probably are some people actively checking out pornhub or whatever. I don't care about that any more than if they were looking at reddit or eBay or Facebook.

arebours• 7 years ago

Based on how bad firewall filters work I wouldn't trust a bit any statistics like this one.

Also, I feel like there are reasonable motives for visiting porn or porn-related sites in this case. It may sound like a joke but if work at legislative body responsible for creating new laws you should be able to do research.

vfulco2• 7 years ago

"And you want to be my latex salesman"