"Ministry of Porn" civil servants sacked

LONDON (Reuters) - The government has fired 19 civil servants and disciplined more than 200 in an unprecedented crackdown on viewing Internet porn at work, officials say.

Breaking the story with a front-page headline "Ministry of Porn," The Sun said staff at the Department of Work and Pensions had accessed two million pages of Web porn in the last year and that one employee alone accessed 103,000 hardcore images.

The DWP would not confirm the newspaper's figures, but said its probe also resulted in one criminal prosecution and a police investigation into two others,

The crackdown is believed to be the biggest of its kind by a government agency on employees' Web-surfing habits.

"The DWP takes the misuse of its IT systems very seriously," a DWP spokeswoman said.

"We regularly scan the computers to determine the presence of offensive or inappropriate material. Disciplinary action has been taken and it may lead to criminal prosecution."

"INNOCENT" CLICKS?

Companies worldwide have invested heavily in elaborate filtering software and devised comprehensive Internet usage guidelines to keep employees from surfing porn sites or downloading free music and movies off the Net on company time.

The measures have had mixed results though -- even among high-tech firms with advanced computer firewalls.

In 2002, PC maker Hewlett-Packard suspended more than 100 staffers in Britain and Ireland for using company e-mail to circulate pornographic material.

Surveys repeatedly show that pornographic sites are among the most popular with everyday Internet users.

The roundup came after a probe into employees' usage of computers and the ministry's data network between July 1, 2003 and March 31, 2004, the DWP spokeswoman said.

If child pornography is found, police are called, she added.

The Sun said the probe was sparked when one civil servant was caught viewing Web porn at his desk.

The DWP spokeswoman said the ministry has firewall software installed on PCs, but she could not explain how it may have been circumvented to access the sites. "The Internet, being as huge as it is, things do get through," she added.

The DWP statement said that in most cases where monitoring showed up porn, further investigation demonstrated staff had "innocently followed a link from another site".

Steve Webb, pensions spokesman for the opposition Liberal Democrats party, called for immediate dismissal of any civil servant accessing porn sites at work.

"There has to be a zero tolerance approach," he said.