from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- Fight! Fight! (oh yes, oh yes) You Have Nude Mail It's an issue of national security, and the West Wing is studying it. More and more employees are downloading porn when they should be working, but now companies are fighting back, reports David Cohen POOR Bill Clinton. As if the controversy surrounding the Monica Lewinsky affair and the fact www.whitehouse.com has been appropriated by a XXX-rated site weren't enough, it emerged last week that several White House employees routinely surfed the Net for porn. Jake Siewart, a spokesman for the White House, confirmed that members of staff have been caught downloading porn off the internet in the past few weeks after a review of their internal server logs. Outside the government, however, British companies are struggling with the problems posed by the Net and the millions of pages of porn that lurk online. According to James Davies, a partner with law firm Lewis Silkin, internet misuse in the workplace is growing. "On average, I get at least two cases a month of employers taking disciplinary action against employees for transmitting pornography over company computer equipment, both by e-mail and downloading from the web," says Davies. "Multiply that by the 20 lawyers in our practice, and you begin to see how common these cases are becoming." Davies says the City is a particular troublespot in London: "Perhaps because of the macho culture there, they might believe that their behaviour is acceptable, but it isn't." Companies take different approaches to the porn problem in a bid to keep their public image clean. A spokesman for NatWest Bank said: "It is strictly forbidden to surf for porn using our network. We remind our internet users of this through regular e-mails. We also use systems to monitor the content of internet traffic. Our software has picked up cases when individuals have surfed the Net for porn, which in some cases lead to disciplinary action." The majority of financial institutions have strict policies regarding personal use of the internet, and severely punish employees who are found downloading porn. A spokesman for one City bank said: "Staff know that when they come to work their e-mail and web surfing is not personal. Due to the sensitive nature of our business, there is no privacy here. All communications are monitored. When you log onto a computer in the bank, you are prompted with a box alerting you to that fact and to company policy on personal use of the internet. There are also stickers on company machines. It is written into most employees' contracts that the use of the internet for personal, let alone obscene, purposes is prohibited. I think surfing for porn is quite sick. Why don't these guys just get girlfriends?" Several high-profile cases of people getting into trouble for looking at pornographic material have hit the headlines over the past few months. In May, Thomson Travel Group fired six employees at its London head office for downloading hardcore porn, and distributing it on the internal network after a colleague took offence to the pictures and reported the incident. Companies such as Dow Chemical, Xerox, Zurich Financial Services and Eidos have all sacked or reprimanded some members of staff for surfing for porn using company equipment (see below for details). But only a handful of people get caught for using the Net for less than work-related matters. According to a report by technology group Elron Software, more than 60pc of companies reported that employees surfed sexually explicit sites, and nearly 30pc had taken action against staff for "surf-abuse". Davies says most companies try to deal with the matter behind closed doors to avoid the negative publicity that naturally follows in the wake of a porn scandal. He says: "Employers don't want to draw attention to these incidents. They just want to get rid of the offenders and get on with life." In one case, a salesman who was sacked had his laptop examined by lawyers, and his bookmarks, or favourite sites, were found to be full of porn sites. "He'd obviously been doing little else at work other than accessing porn," says Davies. "I'm amazed at how stupid some people can be. They think that there is no log of their surfing or e-mails just because they have deleted them, but they are usually still there. It's easy to find what they've been up to." Still there are some companies where the policy is unclear, as with Thomson's before the May incident. "Before the case, we did not have any formal guidelines in place against distribution of porn over our networks," says Dee Byrne, a spokesman for the company. "Now it is written into every new employment contract and the disciplinary penalties have been made clear to all members of staff." But restricting access to known porn sites, and monitoring surfing and e-mail traffic, might not necessarily put paid to the problem. There will always be enterprising minds who will find new ways to get smut into your hands, such as the use of WAP (wireless application protocol) mobile phones. So with the ever-increasing number of people who have internet access in the UK at home or at work, the porn problem looks unlikely to improve. * In July, Dow Chemical sacked 50 employees and disciplined 200 others for downloading and distributing pornographic material on internal company networks. The incident happened in Dow's Midland offices in the US after an employee reported seeing "graphic violence and pornographic material". Dow says it now conducts periodic audits of its servers to identify inappropriate material. * Zurich Financial Services suspended nine members of staff in February at its operations in Swindon and Cheltenham, and finally fired seven after an internal inquiry into obscene e-mails. "Our IT section trawls staff internet access for unauthorised use," a spokeswoman said. * In a clampdown on internet misuse this summer, six civil servants were sacked from the Scottish Executive after they were caught downloading hardcore porn to office computers. The sackings came after a round of warnings. * In May, Kenneth Lockley, a former games designer at Eidos, became the first person in Britain to be charged with incitement to procure on the internet. The 28-year-old was caught in an FBI trap while trying to arrange to have sex with a nine-year-old girl for �200. The man was sacked and jailed for 18 months. The case spurred MPs to table amendments to the Criminal Justice Act to deal with internet paedophiles. The London Telegraph, August 17, 2000 <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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