Is there an employee, you want to get rid of but can't find a good enough reason to fire? Well, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, there's now an easy and hassle-free answer: their Internet history -- there's sure to be something in there that will nail them. Confused? Then let's take a look at the precedents.
In July, Chancellor Gordon Brown announced plans to axe 104,000 civil service jobs over the next three years. Of that 104,000, around 84,150 will be lost from Whitehall -- 30,000 specifically from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). Overall, the Chancellor claimed, the cuts, plus other efficiency measures, would help save £21.5bn a year for frontline public services. A great message for a government facing opposition attacks over waste and complacency.
Now fast forward six weeks to Friday 27 August. The Sun newspaper splashes on its front page details of a massive internal crackdown on Internet porn surfing at the DWP. The government fires around 19 civil servants and disciplines more than 200 for viewing Internet porn at work. An interesting chronology.
While to suggest that this purge was done simply to tick 19 heads off the 30,000-strong DWP hit list is obviously misguided; what this investigation does do is plant in public consciousness the idea of a lazy civil service with nothing better to do all day than surf the Web for pornography. As a piece of propaganda, it's a powerful message and so easy to execute. Give an average workforce free access to the diversity of content available on the Internet and you're bound to snag some of the dumber ones looking at stuff they shouldn't. And before you can say "lower headcount", it's P45 time.
If the same kind of moral light was shone into most organisations of a size equivalent to the DWP, then a similar number of sackings wouldn't be at all surprising. Unfortunately for the DWP, someone decided to take a long hard look for something rotten: and after looking long enough, they found it.
Computer misuse and, more specifically, porn surfing at work, has the potential to become an extremely useful tool with which to eliminate specific employees. Not convinced? More evidence required?
At the end of May, the millionaire chief executive of the Bank of Ireland Group, Michael Soden, resigned after it was discovered he had used his office computer to view pornography and access an escort agency's website. "Disgraceful, disgusting, he got what he deserved," the gallery cries. That's the initial reaction anyway, but look further into the story and it emerges that the porn in question was, according to one insider, nothing harder than that in the average men's magazine. While there is an extremely complex back-history to the Soden case, which we don't have time to go into, what is significant is that it is another example of Internet porn contributing to the sacking of an individual whom certain elements of his company wanted gone.
Talkback
Good Article, thanks:
Recently I rebuilt the ancient PC belonging to an elderly lady neighbour. The PC had been running so slowly that it refused to print.
While cleaning out the unnecessary software and files I found many traces of unpleasant pornography left by previous owners of the PC. Several cookies had stored those owners' names and dates of access. Some of the pornographic sites had planted trojans and diallers.
Presumably in today's Britain I should have rung the police and/or the tabloids?
Somehow it seemed far better just to delete the files and then run my best anti-spyware and anti-virus software before returning the cleaned PC with a brief circumspect explanation.
(ps. This cleaned PC now runs and prints.)
When the workers start deleting their history, then they're screwed.
Right on. Companies often generate a spurious excuse to dismiss an employee in order to disguise the real reason and avoid compensation. But look at the wider issue: It costs the police some £2,000 to conduct a forensic investigation of a computer hard drive. With several hundred thousand cases pending, how long will it take before common sense kicks in? At this rate not until police forces blow their entire budget on this fruitless exercise. We are talking of some £500,000,000 whick is coming out of householders' Council tax.
The "Trojan" defence is interesting, but I suspect that as top government officials get drawn in, the investigation will suddenly run out of steam. Still at least that's one thing Blunkett can't be accused of.
While hardly condoning pornography, particularly child pornography, you have to realise it is an adiction, rather than a crime. So therapy is the answer, not incarceration of lawabiding, largely middle-class men. What is the percentage in giving people like accountants and solicitors a criminal record? You render them unemployable, particularly in the UK, so kiss goodbye all that potential tax income Gordon Brown.
Britain's problem is it has never grown out of its Victorian "dirty picture" hangup. Our pornography laws are the strictest in Europe. So instead of authority taking out its frustration on the mug punter, go after those supplying and abusing children to produce pornographic images.
Can't believe it has taken this long for computer manufacturers to supply their machines with software that wipes a user's downloading record. Inexpensive programmes that defeat an expensive police investigation are definately one in the eye for authority.