From: dmhills{at}attglobal.net (Don Hills)

In article , Adam Flinton
 wrote:
>http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/22/coppers_love_porn/
>
>"Randy coppers in New Zealand waste so much time surfing for porn while
>on the job that fully 20 per cent of police computer system capacity is
>devoted to storing the images, an official audit has revealed."

Front page here, coming on the heels of a periodic public "crisis of
confidence" in the NZ Police and counter-complaints of undermanning
and overwork.

Showing that numbers are used by the media to sell media, the 20% quoted
was space on their mail servers. Their mail is supposed to be mainly text.
Images and documents are supposed to be stored in other repositories so it
doesn't take much bloat in mail to be noticeable. About 4% of the total
number of staff (both sworn and non-sworn) were involved. Other figures
largely ignored by the media showed that the figure compared very
favourably with porn levels in other organisations, proved also by a
breakdown of the original sources of the emails. Given that NZ Police
officers are predominantly young, male and of robust personality(*) I'm
surprised the problem wasn't bigger. They do periodic audits, this one just
attracted more attention due to the Police being in the media so much of
late.

The Register also showed its compulsion to come up with snappy bylines
regardless of accuracy - the story was (correctly) reported here as being
about emails "doing the rounds" of address lists, not about
officers spending time surfing. Although they do have Web access from their
desktops, it's well monitored.

(*) I spent 18 months on technical support in their main operations centre
when they were commissioning the current system. I worked with a *lot* of
police officers in that time. Compared to typical computer users, they were
a joy to work with. Clear and concise problem reports, responded quickly to
messages, focused and helpful when troubleshooting.

--
Don Hills    (dmhills at attglobaldotnet)     Wellington, New Zealand
"New interface closely resembles Presentation Manager,
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