You can tell we’re in the slow news days when the BBC publishes an article about organisations (in this article, local council authorities) blocking access to certain websites for their employees. Wow! Who’d have thought anyone would do that?

The author of the article spices up an otherwise dull piece by emphasising that the councils in question had blocked access to ‘Porn, gun and fetish sites’.

Hovering over the shoulders of the author are an angel and a demon; one is tutting and whispering ‘I should think so too. Disgusting!’ and the other is gleefully waving a wooden spoon ‘Ah! But who gets to decide what’s acceptable? Nanny state interference!’. Ok that bit is from my imagination but I think I detect both attitudes in the article.

Scattered around are allusions to personal use of the systems during break times or hints at too much time being wasted on personal usage; or how use of social networks is important to service delivery and a nod to striking a balance between personal freedom and commitment to the job.

But there’s another dimension to this story which the author misses completely. The council’s IT staff at various levels are responsible for providing the rest of the staff with various computers (phones, tablets, laptops, desktops - probably a server or two), the network to connect them all together in a controlled way, and access to external services such as cloud-based applications (for example e-mail but also including stuff like Facebook and Twitter). However, most importantly, they should be monitoring to check that the personal information held by the council (eg about local residents or staff) is held securely and not accessed improperly. To do that they need to be aware what ‘normal’ usage of their systems looks like and spot when a device starts being used for something out of the ordinary. To achieve this level of control it is not at all unreasonable to aim for a situation where what is necessary to do the job is permitted, but evereything else is blocked/banned.

     Oooh not fair! Discrimination against fetishists! We demand our freedom! If I don’t get to fantasise about Walther PPKs, Glocks and AK47s then I might snap - and the consequences will be all your fault!
         

Get over it. If you need your porn/guns/fetish fix four times daily then use your own computer and pay for your own network access. Also fix your own problems when the malicious adverts wrapped around the websites you visit infect your machine with malware, steal your personal information and subborn your device into a botnet to attack the rest of the Internet. You think I exaggerate? Even mainstream players like Google can be used to attack you. If you stray off the well-trodden paths you are likely to be attacked.

Now, just how good are you at disinfecting your computer?