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10k inappropriate images found on county council computers

ALMOST 10,000 “inappropriate” images have been found on Notts County Council staff’s computers.

They were found when 1 in 8 of the authority’s computers were scanned in an £82,000 investigation.

More than 2,700 of the images were “highly inappropriate”, a category including graphic pornography and pictures “which may cause distress or psychological harm to an unexpected viewer”.

The extent of the investigation was revealed in the results of a Freedom of Information request made by the Evening Post.

The council said that 3 members of staff were sacked.

No illegal images were found, but police were informed after one employee tried to view “inappropriate material” online. No arrest was made.

Another worker resigned after viewing pornography, four were given warnings, two were suspended and five are still under investigation.

Documents show that officers considered halting the investigation because of the likely scale of the problem.

One letter to senior officers said: “The authority’s counselling service is available for managers who may wish to use this service should they find difficulty in dealing with the subject matter.

“It is possible that some images will be of a severe nature, with the potential to cause distress to the viewer.”

Pornographic websites are blocked but images are believed to have been circulated by e-mail and put on council computers with memory sticks.

The council started its investigation in May last year and used a program called PixAlert to scan PCs.

Councillors’ computers will be scanned during the next phase of the investigation.
Results showed the percentage of computers with inappropriate images to be below average so far.

Notts County Council decided to issue a press statement to all local media the day before the Evening Post received the results of the Freedom of Information request.

A staff memo, written in June 2008, said: “It is quite clear that this is a highly sensitive issue which has repercussions in a number of areas, the main being the reputation of the authority should this situation come to the light of the public.”

Chief executive Mick Burrows said the investigation would continue for another year, adding: “We have a sophisticated filtering system which greatly reduces the chances of staff being able to download highly inappropriate material from the internet.

“However, we have less control on highly inappropriate images that are viewed on council computers which come from an e-mail attachment, memory sticks or any other devices.”

Council leader Coun Kay Cutts said: “Viewing this kind of material on office computers is totally unacceptable.  I am pleased that senior officers have been proactive in dealing with staff who flout the rules.”

Written on 22 January 2010 by Dicontas Blog Admin under Stories with Comments Off
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links for 2007-07-12

  • Companies to update websites and email footers
    Companies in the UK must include certain regulatory information on their websites and in their email footers by the 1st January 2007 or they will breach the Companies Act and risk a fine. Every company should list its company details on all electronic communications and forms.
    (tags: email-compliance law legal)

Written on 12 July 2007 by Dicontas Blog Admin under Relevant Links with No Comments
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image filtering – the only legal defence against the new UK Harassment law

In a landmark case in 2006 on the subject of bullying in the workplace; the House of Lords have changed the law so as to make employers liable for workplace harassment even if they were not in any way negligent.

The House of Lords decided that the Prevention from Harassment Act 1997 covers the behaviour of employees at work even when the employer has not caused or failed to prevent the offending behaviour. Those employers now have vicarious liability for the acts of employees.

Previously, employees had to prove that the employer was negligent in not stopping bullying taking place and that it had caused them psychological damage.

The new ruling means that companies can be sued even if the company cannot be expected to have known about the bullying, and this ruling is certainly wide enough to include the use of inappropriate image materials as the vehicle for e-bullying.

This decision has serious implications for employers as it gives employees who are bullied or harassed at work a further basis on which to claim compensation from their employers. Moreover, some of the existing limitations and defences will not be available. For example, an employer has a defence under existing discrimination legislation if it can show that it took all reasonably practicable steps to prevent discriminatory harassment occurring – this defence was recently made out where an employer had implemented an effective harassment policy. This would not help an employer facing a claim that it was vicariously liable for an employee’s harassment under the Prevention from Harassment Act 1997.

As we know that harassment takes place in the workplace through the use of pornographic images, it seems that the only avenue forward for employers in avoiding the breadth of this decision is to technologically interdict the harassment and the inappropriate image content employed therein so as to stop it reaching the intended target.

This new law should make employers realise that an effective email and image filtering solution is now a must for any digital workplace and is now the only legal defence in terms of the law and vicarious liability.

Source: image-analyzer.com

Written on 24 May 2007 by Dicontas Blog Admin under Email Content Filtering with No Comments
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Anti-Spam lawsuit filed seeking $1 Billion

The Utah-based Anti-Spam company Unspam Technologies has filed a one billion dollar lawsuit on behalf of over 20,000 internet users. The suit was filed in Virginia under the CAN-SPAM Act and Virginia law.

They are targeting anyone who targets our members with email spam, comment spam, or harvesting. This lawsuit is unique because they believe it is the first major case in the US to bring a claim against spammers for harvesting email addresses.

Project Honey Pot is the first and only distributed system for identifying spammers and the spam-bots they use to scrape addresses from your website. Using the Project Honey Pot system you can install addresses that are custom-tagged to the time and IP address of a visitor to your site. If one of these addresses begins receiving email we not only can tell that the messages are spam, but also the exact moment when the address was harvested and the IP address that gathered it

For more info visit, http://www.projecthoneypot.org/index.php

Written on 28 April 2007 by Dicontas Blog Admin under News with No Comments
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Email monitoring may contravene European law

Monitoring employees’ internet & telephone use at work may contravene EU human rights laws, after a landmark case in the European Court of Human Rights last week.

The case involved a public-sector employee, who won €3,000 in damages and €6,000 in court costs and expenses, after her communications were intercepted by her employer, Carmarthenshire College. Lynette Copland successfully took the UK government to court after her personal internet usage and telephone calls were monitored by one of her bosses in 1999.

This ruling means that the private use of company telecoms equipment and internet access may be protected under European human rights legislation, if the company has an acceptable personal-use policy and fails to inform the employee that their communications may be monitored. Employee communications are also covered by human rights legislation if the organisation has no explicit acceptable use policy and fails to inform the employee of the monitoring of personal email.

Privacy law firm, Pinsent Masons, said that although businesses now have clear guidance for monitoring work communications under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000, personal communications at work may be protected by the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Human Rights Act 1998. “The lawful business practice regulations allow an employer to monitor and intercept business communications, so the court is implying that private use of a telecommunications system, assuming it is authorised via an acceptable-use policy, can be protected [by human rights legislation],” said Dr Chris Pounder, a privacy specialist. “The ruling is important in that it reinforces the need for a statutory basis for any interference with respect to private use of a telecommunications system by an employee,” Pounder added.

Source: ZDNet, 11 April 2007

Written on 11 April 2007 by Dicontas Blog Admin under Law & Legal Issues with No Comments
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Company warning! Email communications added to UK Sexual Offences Act

Changes to UK Sexual Offences Act could mean negligent companies face listing on the registry.

The inclusion of email harassment in the revised UK Sexual Offences Act could open companies up to legal troubles, said an industry insider.

The UK Sexual Offences Act 2003 was recently updated to include “improper use of public communications.” Because of this, a person sending sexually harassing emails could be handed a sexual offences prevention order (SOPO) and therefore be included on the national sex offender registry.

“It really has tremendous implications for any organisation because the widening of the sexual offenders act could mean employers have vicarious liability,” said Ed Macnair, CEO of internet security firm Marshal. “The person sending is prosecutable, but also the organisation.” He cited one case where a London hospital was held liable in a harassment suit involving members of staff and another in the US where an employee’s wife sued her husband’s firm because they facilitated his child pornography habits.

“You don’t want your chief operating officer on the sexual offender registry because somebody in the company did something,” Macnair said.

Source: ITPro

Written on 18 March 2007 by Dicontas Blog Admin under Email Monitoring, Law & Legal Issues with No Comments
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