District Staff Loses Online Access Over Porn Sites

Pasadena school officials said Monday that they have cut the Internet access of hundreds of district employees after discovering that more than 100 of them had logged onto pornographic sites.

As a result, teachers and other staff members will be denied Internet access at home until the district can prepare a policy, probably no sooner than February, said William Deeb, business manager of the Pasadena Unified School District.

Deeb said his staff discovered the problem about three weeks ago by daily monitoring of a register that records all the sites visited on the dial-up service.

School Board President Lisa Fowler said a former manager in the district gave an unknown number of employees passwords so they could do district business such as e-mail from home. She said the district does not know who had the accounts. The accounts did not include students.

The district’s situation is a reflection of a broader dilemma that has touched off steamy debate in businesses: how to keep the huge number of Internet porn sites out of an increasingly wired workplace.

Deeb would not say how many people misused their Internet access, except that it was “much, much more than 100.” He said he was unable to rule out the possibility that students were exposed to pornography.

Despite the shutdown of dial-up service, Deeb said, the district’s Internet server remains open, so students can still use the Internet in their classrooms. Teachers and other district employees can access e-mail and conduct electronic research at the district’s Education Center at Washington Junior High School.

Deeb would not identify any specific sites that were viewed, or say how many were involved.

He said the register is set up to categorize Internet addresses as acceptable or unacceptable, and that in cases where there is a question, “we check them out.”

“But most of them you can tell,” Deeb said. “They are very obvious.”

Public agencies have faced some of the same Internet problems as businesses.

In Los Angeles’ Central Library, computers are regularly used to call up online photos of naked women, digitized videos of sex acts and ribald chat-room discussions.

But Los Angeles City Librarian Susan Kent decided not to institute any restrictions, as have county library systems in Orange and L.A. counties.

“I can understand that some people might be upset,” Kent said. “But to make the Internet unavailable because some might abuse it shuts off an entire universe of information for everyone else.”

The problem of Internet access in the workplace has now advanced from pornography to gambling, travel planning and stock trading, said Diana McKenzie, partner in the Chicago law firm Gordon & Glickson, which specializes in information law.

But most employers find that the value of Internet use far outweighs the two potential drawbacks: loss of productivity and liability from anyone unwillingly subjected to pornography in the workplace.

Seldom is a decision made to deny employees access, McKenzie said.

“That’s sort of an over-dramatic answer, because there’s a lot of good things that can come out of the Internet,” she said.

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More commonly, employers have attempted to regulate Internet use by formulating information technology policies that spell out disciplines--including termination--and then auditing employees’ Internet use.

Deeb said the Pasadena school district will develop such a policy and upgrade its monitoring so that it can single out individuals who abuse the system.

Los Angeles Unified School District spokesman Brad Sales said the region’s largest school system has caught some employees downloading pornography, causing it to build an electronic firewall to prevent further problems.

“A couple of teachers have had their access pulled because of it,” Sales said. “As far as we can tell, it wasn’t widespread. But it’s pretty hard to monitor.”

Pasadena school officials apparently gave out password access to the district’s Internet server sporadically to teachers and other staff.

Deeb said he believes most of the use was at home.

School board President Fowler said the dial-up service did not cost the district money. “There was nothing wrong with what was happening, it is just that the privilege was abused,” she said.

Fowler said she will discuss the issue with Supt. Vera Vignes, who is out this week on school business, and pursue further action.

She said she hopes that the ban is temporary.

“It’s unfortunate because now it takes a privilege away from people who are fair-minded,” Fowler said.

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Times education writers Doug Smith and Amy Pyle contributed to this story.