State Workers Fired For Downloading Child Porn

The Courier-Journal picks up more on the State of Indiana's efforts to filter what state employees may view on their work computers. A few state workers have been fired for downloading child pornography to their state computers according to the story. Elisabeth Beardsley writes:

The Indiana state government began restricting state workers' Internet access yesterday and some employees have been fired or disciplined after evidence was found that child pornography was viewed from work computers.

The move came a day after the state of Kentucky, in an unrelated move, expanded its filtering efforts to ban blogs, entertainment and shopping sites.

"Child pornography — you see those two words and you think, `Oh my God,' which is what we all thought," said Chris Cotterill, general counsel for the Indiana Office of Technology. "Child pornography is disgusting and it was taken very seriously."

A "handful" of employees were fired and several others were disciplined after the technology agency reported them to their human-resources departments for viewing child porn, Cotterill said. The agency also notified the state police, he said.

Gov. Mitch Daniels supports the decision to install a filtering system, which replaces what had been the employees' unfettered Internet access, said Daniels spokeswoman Jane Jankowski. "He wants to assure that there's appropriate use of state resources and so he is fully on board" with the Office of Technology plan, she said.

Beardsley quotes Cotteril as saying, "Indiana has not yet banned blogs." "Cotterill said individual employees' Web habits are not being monitored, although he said activity such as viewing child porn can usually be traced to a specific person." The state purchased the new system from 8e6 Technologies for $166,307, plus annual maintenance costs.