Severe Penalties Under New Uk Law For Extreme Pornographic Images

By Author: Colm Doherty
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Employers checking I.T. resources for legal risk.

CAMBRIDGE, UK (2nd Jan 2009): British Employers face new challenges to ensure their I.T. resources are free of inappropriate images now classed as illegal under the latest legislation taking effect this month.

A specialist risk mitigation software vendor is assisting UK employers, both public and private sector, who are seeking to gauge their exposure to sections 63-67 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, which make illegal the possession of extreme pornographic images.

The Act introduces a new offence in England, Wales and Northern Ireland of the possession of extreme pornographic images, which comes into force 26th January 2009, with penalties of up to 3 years imprisonment and substantial fines. To fall foul of the act, an image must be pornographic, grossly offensive, disgusting, or otherwise of an obscene character and portray an extreme act.

The issue of inappropriate images in the workplace is pervasive, says Kieran Caulfield, and a proportion of the images found on networks by our software would be in breach of the new legislation ...
... if not removed.

As the global leader in this field, they has seen a rise in the volume of inappropriate images stored & circulated on company networks and to external parties. Inappropriate material was found on 29% of the PCs audited and in 14% of e-mail accounts. In over 250 network audits, all but 4 audits uncovered illicit or inappropriate images. Fully 32.9% of illicit images found were highly inappropriate, the category which includes images now illegal under the new legislation.

The need for professional assistance in achieving compliance with the new law is underlined by the fact that simply deleting images may not be sufficient. There are software and services which provide for the safe & permanent removal of such material.
Unsecured sensitive data discovered on 36% of Enterprise computers.

Rise in the levels of pornography found on workplace PCs.

A specialist risk-mitigation software vendor has seen a rise in the levels of risk it discovers when scanning computer networks in the enterprise & public sector for unsecured sensitive data and inappropriate images.

We had expected to find an improved compliance culture, given the reputational & financial damage organisations face from any incident of data leakage or pornography in the workplace said CEO Colm Doherty, but the human factor remains as an issue

The company's software was used to scan PCs, fileshares and e-mail accounts in more than 150 organisations. Despite a rise in regulatory compliance imperatives and investments made in network gateway controls, they discovered disturbing levels of personal & sensitive data, leaving organisations open to potential ID fraud and intellectual property theft.

We found suspected sensitive data on 46% of PCs, in 32% of e-mail accounts and 30% of server shares says Andy Churley, Chief Marketing Officer, adding We were concerned at the volume and nature of the material we found, including full credit card details, National Insurance & pension details and network logins & passwords. In most of the organisations scanned, we found more than enough material to perpetrate ID fraud and the constitute a significant loss of critical data such as financial information and intellectual property

During the past year, they also saw a rise in the volumes of Inappropriate Images both stored & circulated within the enterprise and beyond it to external parties. Pornographic or inappropriate material was found on 28.5% of PCs in 2007, up from 25% in 2006 and in 14.4% of e-mail accounts, up from 12.4% in 2006.

What's interesting is that this issue persists, regardless of the significant investments made in content filtering and gateway controls in recent years, says Churley, adding it just reinforces the need to know what is actually on your network, by conducting regular risk audits