Ever wondered what goes on behind closed doors in the corridors of power? Now we know.
U.K. members of Parliament, lords, and other parliamentary staff tried to access porn sites 300,000 times in a year.
The news comes just weeks after Prime Minister David Cameron pushed Internet providers to install porn filters by default for all U.K. users.
Official figures revealed in a freedom of information request by the Huffington Post show attempts to view porn over the parliamentary network between May 2012 and this July. The monthly breakdown shows a peak of 114,844 attempts in November and just 15 in February.
A spokeswoman suggested many of the attempts to view porn stem from pop-ups or pages that automatically refresh and add another hit to the counter each time. That meant not all of the porn hits were “purposeful requests,” the spokeswoman added.
Officials declined to reveal how Parliament staff define pornographic content or whether users would view content defined as porn while viewing mainstream websites. Nor is it clear why the number of monthly requests changed so drastically.
Yet it seems parliamentarians will not be subject to the same rules. “We are not going to restrict Parliamentarians’ ability to carry out research,” said the spokeswoman.
It’s estimated more than 5,000 people—from lords and MPs to aides and canteen staff—work on the parliamentary estate. There’s a decent chance many will look at coworkers a little differently from now on.
