Parliament's Porn Habit Laid Bare. 300,000 Attempts To Access 'Adult' Websites From Work Computers
The Houses of Parliament maybe debating a crackdown on online pornography; but that doesn't stop the 'adult' urges whilst hard at work. Official records obtained by the Huffington Post suggest that more than 300,000 attempts were made to access porn websites from their work computers in the past year.
In response, House of Commons officials have claimed it is unclear which of the 5,000 people who work in parliament, including MPs, Lords and Parliamentary staff have been logging on. They also claim the figures may have been exaggerated by third-party software and websites that automatically reload.
This comes after David Cameron's request for a block on internet pornography, unless users requested access from their ISPs, claiming it was "corroding childhood" and "distorting" children's understanding of sex and relationships.
Claimed by the Huffington post under a Freedom of Information request, the data shows a set of wildly varying monthly figures. While over 110,000 attempts to access porn were recorded in November last year, only 15 were identified in February 2013. This shows either some potential faults with this data, or some extremely bored Parliamentary staff towards the end of last year.
Attempts per month
- May 2012: 2,141
- June 2012: 2,261
- July 2012: 6,024
- August 2012: 26,952
- September 2012: 15,804
- October 2012: 3,391
- November 2012: 114,844
- December 2012: 6,918
- January 2013: 18,494
- February 2013: 15
- March 2013: 22,470
- April 2013: 55,552
- May 2013: 18,346
- June 2013: 397
- July 2013: 15,707
A House of Commons spokeswoman played down the data by saying: "We do not consider the data to provide an accurate representation of the number of purposeful requests made by network users due to the variety of ways in which websites can be designed to act, react and interact and due to the potential operation of third party software."
