There were 24,000 attempts to access pornographic websites between June and October 2017 from the British Parliament’s computer network, The Guardian reported, citing official data. The figure works out to about 160 requests per day on average from computers and other devices connected to the parliamentary network used by MPs, peers and members of the staff.
The revelation comes weeks after Prime Minister Theresa May sacked First Secretary of State Damian Green, who was effectively her deputy, for making misleading statements regarding what he knew about the claims of pornography found on his office computer in 2008. The police had found the explicit material on one of the computers at the House of Commons that Green used while conducting their inquiry into leaks from the British Home Office.
The data, which was released after the Press Association filed a freedom of information request, shows that there was a sudden increase in the attempts to access explicit material in September 2017, with 9,467 requests from both Houses of Lords and Commons.
Parliamentary authorities, however, said the majority of the attempts were not deliberate, and there was a marked fall in the figures for 2017, Sky News reported. The filtering system of the computer network blocked 1,13,208 attempts in 2016, down from 2,13,020 in 2015.
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