MPs cannot look at Daily Sport site

Friday, March 27, 2009

MPs in the House of Commons have been prevented from viewing "inappropriate" material, including an MP's column in the Daily Sport.

The Commons IT system blocks access to websites that contain "offensive or illegal content or are sources of malicious software". This included the Daily Sport website, on which the Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Opik writes a column. Opik said he did not believe the site should be blocked.

"Because of the things they are trying to censor they may have made an assumption about this particular website," he said.

But he said he did not believe the site was "inappropriate" and that although he backed the filters, which prevented MPs from being bombarded with "utter rubbish", he did think they were too restrictive and sometimes prevented MPs from accessing sites they needed for their work.

"It actually happens quite a lot. Perhaps the filters can be finessed so that my words of wisdom can be shared by one and all in the Palace of Westminster."

Guidance issued to all MPs in December 2007 warned MPs they have a duty to ensure the parliamentary network is used properly "by themselves and their staff" and to avoid actions that "threaten the integrity of the system or bring it into disrepute".

• The parliamentary IT network has become infected with the Conficker virus, according to Channel 4 News.

Conficker embeds itself into networks and can be used to steal passwords and personal information.

It has not been made clear how the infection occurred, but it has been alleged that parliament had failed to follow standard online security procedures. A spokesman for the House of Commons refused to comment.

Speaking to Channel 4, Rob Cotton, of IT security company NCC Group, said: "This incident clearly shows, once again, that when it comes to even the most basic of security procedures, parliament is lagging behind everyone else.

"Unauthorised machines shouldn't even be capable of coming anywhere near an official network like this, particularly one which could provide a doorway to seriously sensitive material. Even worse, this particular virus is one that has been around since November last year, and security updates and patches have previously been issued to deal with it."