75ZT Community

... is alive and well.

Recent examples across both the Civil Service departments with which I am involved.

A recent surprise audit of my use of the interent and various web-sites visited raised concerns for the senior management within the $hit-hole where I work.

Mod Computers and internet connections are not supposed to be used for accessing eBay, Rover fora, Jaguar fora etc., even during lunchtimes and break times. How do I account for this? Well... perhaps if the over-zealous moron who had carried out the inspection had bothered to check, she would have realised that she was accessing my personal computer and not the MoD computer.
I am now actively involved in persuing a line of enquiry as to how and why an individual, upon the instruction of the MoD, managed to access my private computer records without a Magistrates' search warrant.

I'm also involved with the Ministry of Justice.

Just recently the civic centre car park in Wolverhampton, for which Magiatrates have a pass, has been closed for refurbishment and Magistrates are required to troll nomadically through the City's car parks each day to find a parking place.

My daily expences, including mileage and parking costs come to a little over £14.00
I can get a taxi from home to Court and back again for a total of £10-£11.

Using a taxi is not an option and will not be allowed as a legitimate expence because there is no box to tick in the murky world of admin. Multiply the £4.00 difference by the number of Magistrates sitting, the number of days in the working week and the number of weeks that the Civic Centre car park is out of commission.

Beauraucracy is alive and well.

Paul surely they have not accessed your personal computer but the server that is used to access the Internet would have details of the node and the websites accessed from that node.

Where I worked they blocked access to ebay.co.uk which was easily got around by accessing ebay.co.uk/someitem . However, they sussed that out and blocked access to anything with 'ebay' in the address.

And as for your parking no doubt they are of the opinion that the time it would take to form a committee and the various sub-committees to investigate placing a tick box on the form for a tick box for TAXI would take far longer than the works in the car park that is out of action.

PaulT wrote:Paul surely they have not accessed your personal computer but the server that is used to access the Internet would have details of the node and the websites accessed from that node.

Nope - she went straight in to my own personal lappy.

Is that not in some way illegal?

Rover418275 wrote:Is that not in some way illegal?

Yes - very much so.

raistlin wrote:

PaulT wrote:Paul surely they have not accessed your personal computer but the server that is used to access the Internet would have details of the node and the websites accessed from that node.

Nope - she went straight in to my own personal lappy.

Naughty - let's hope she does not commit a traffic offence and come up in front of the magistrates.

PaulT wrote:Where I worked they blocked access to ebay.co.uk which was easily got around by accessing ebay.co.uk/someitem . However, they sussed that out and blocked access to anything with 'ebay' in the address.

Similar where I worked, in the NHS.

Early on, when the Internet was still growing, not everyone was allowed access to the Intranet, let alone the Internet, but as it became more and more useful as a means of communication, it was opened up to all. Then of course, people started to abuse it, not so much from the point of of view of looking at dodgy stuff (although this did happen with someone in the neighbouring dept, who got his marching orders) rather that staff were just wasting huge amounts of time. Some were running eBay businesses from work, others just messing about on Facebook. We were shown how to get round blocks by a visiting software engineer, who told us we could find the direct IP addresses of sites like eBay and put those in instead - the IT staff hadn't really placed very strict controls, and it took them a while to catch on to this trick! I didn't condone it of course, as I wanted my staff to do the work they were paid for, although I had no issue with them browsing at lunchtime. When I left a few years ago, everything was properly blocked, but of course people now had SmartPhones, so still browsed the 'net instead of working!

Now it seems that the Powers That Be have decided that Facebook is a "valuable networking tool" and have re-allowed it's use. This is probably to stop people using their phones. If I want to contact any old colleagues now, I drop them a Facebook message. They usually reply within a minute.....