Multiple government departments have caught staff trying to access pornography online.
Documents obtained by Newshub under the Official Information Act show the Ministry for the Environment, the Ministry for Māori Development and the Ministry of Justice have blocked staff accessing explicit material.
The Ministry for the Environment provided data from July 27 to October 25, 2019. There were 12 attempts to access stripchat.com and searches for porn.com, bongacams.com sss.xxx and see.xxx. There were also attempts to access porn games and privateinternetaccess.com.
The documents said staff are expected to use IT and communications facilities in a responsible manner, in accordance with the Ministry's Standards for Integrity and Conduct policy and the laws of New Zealand, and the Public Service Code of Conduct.
A spokesperson defended the ministry's "robust policy".
"Our system filters the requests by a range of categories such as adult, alcohol, weapons, intimate apparel and more. This is to give us, and the public, confidence that only appropriate material is viewed by staff."
The Ministry of Māori Development - Te Puni Kokiri staff attempted to access Pornhub.com during 42 sessions between October 17, 2018 and August 1, 2019.
Thirty-four attempts were blocked while eight attempts were successful. The documents say there was a "specific set of circumstances under which it was possible to access blocked websites, and we now have additional measures in place to prevent this happening".
All eight successful attempts were from the same user and that person has subsequently left the ministry.
A spokesperson told Newshub alternative blocking strategies were being tested at the time that allowed the user to access the site.
"We have since confirmed our blocking strategy and we do not consider it would be possible to access blocked sites in the future. If we are aware that devices have been used in an unacceptable manner, this will be raised with the person concerned and action taken in accordance with policy".
Professor Dave Parry, AUT's Head of Computer Sciences, told Newshub the searches look deliberate.
"I really don't see how else it could happen. In which case I suspect people may have turned off the safe search. That looks very intentional to me unless they've turned off the safe search for something previously. However, I don't really see people doing that accidentally."
Between April 2019 and August 2019, there were 41,646,937 blocked sites TPK staff have attempted to access. They include 73 nudity attempts, 546 provocative attire searches and 2420 pornography searches.
There were also 217 attempts to anonymise search history.
"It shows a little bit of a guilty conscious probably and quite often you'll find people believe they are anonymising which of course they're not really because the employer will have details of any of the searches that they're doing," Parry said.
"The take-home message from that is really if you've got a policy at work you should be following that policy or negotiating a change to the policy."
There have been two attempts to access Pornhub.com by Ministry of Justice staff between August 2018 and August 2019. One incident was successful where a previous Ministry employee who has since left accessed the explicit site.
There was a second attempt in May this year which was blocked. Other blocked websites weren't provided as "it would require a security specialist to analyse 60 gigabytes of log data which would be both impractical and unduly expensive to complete".
Chief Technology Officer Craig Candy told Newshub its web policy is conservative and blocks many types of content or categories of content which other organisations might normally allow.
"While it would take some time to accurately break down what each individual log was for, over 80 percent of the log data came from Google ads and Google Hangouts, and 13 percent from Skype. The rest were from tracking services and other ad services.
The Ministry of Education didn't provide Newshub with website access material as "we only keep logs of web traffic for 60 days and therefore do not have logs for the time period you requested".
The Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment subscribes to the Symantec Bluecoat web filtering service. Between August 3 and August 31, 2019, no staff accessed or attempted to access Pornhub.com.
Other logs couldn't be provided as "this exercise would be costly and time-consuming as MBIE employs over 5,000 staff".
There were no attempts by ACC staff to access Pornhub.com between August 2018 and August 2019. It couldn't provide logging information "because our security tools are used to monitor and secure our internet presence and log a set of specific events, rather than provide a reporting tool for overall security data".
Staff at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) didn't visit the explicit site from August 2018. In August this year, there were millions of denied web requests.
A spokesperson said MFAT has IT security settings at a level higher than most other government agencies. Any site that does not have a positive reputational security endorsement, or is not of a trusted origin, is blocked.
There have been no attempts to view material on Pornhub by Ministry of Transport staff since June 2019. Over the same time period, there have been 8,719,522 blocked attempts to 830 sites.
UP to 83 percent of the blocks are from their top five sites: Windowsupdate.com, Microsoft.com, Doubleclick.net, Symantec.com and Adobe.com.
The Ministry for Women doesn't restrict internet access and its current system doesn't allow it to confirm whether sites such as Pornhub.com have been accessed. It is currently reviewing its Information, Communication and Technology Acceptable Use Policy.
It is "unable to provide information on any breaches of this policy due to Privacy Act considerations, and to ensure the continued security of the Ministry's information".
The Ministry of Defence told Newshub staff are unable to access Pornhub.com on corporate accounts as it's blacklisted along with other objectionable websites. It says the number of blocked attempts to access blacklisted sites are not gathered or held by the ministry.
The Ministry for Arts, Culture and Heritage staff hadn't accessed the website in the previous 100 days. Other blocked website data wasn't provided as "we do not have a precise record of the information you have requested".
It outsources its monitoring service to Datacom NZ.
Inland Revenue, Corrections, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry for Housing and Urban Development, MPI, MSD and police extended the time it would take for them to return the information to Newshub.
The Government's considering major changes to the rules governing porn. Newshub previously revealed Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin is open to everything, including a crackdown on Government agencies.
Newshub.
