Police may be instructed to investigate reports New South Wales Members of Parliament or their staffers over allegations that they viewed websites containing sexually explicit images of young people.
The allegations were contained in an independent report undertaken by consultancy firm Ernst & Young. The report was requested in September 2010 after accusations were made based on an unofficial audit of computers used by Members of Parliament and their staffers.
The audit was undertaken by the Department of Parliamentary Services and found that certain computers used by Members of Parliament had tens of thousands of hits on pornographic and gambling websites.
The audit was conducted using forensic software to determine the IP addresses of websites visited. Further analysis was made to ascertain what images were viewed or downloaded plus the time spent on each site. The data was contained in web surfing histories known as DAT files which are automatically saved on the personal computers and on back-up tapes. Further searches were made of the internet activity monitoring software installed on the gateway servers to cross reference the activity.
Earlier in 2010 following the first audit, Labor government Ports Minister Paul McLeay was fired by Premier Kristina Keneally after he admitted that he had been accessing online adult pornography and gaming sites whilst he served as a minister and as a backbencher.
The Ernst & Young report reported that nearly half of the 72 most-used websites on parliamentary computers during a 10-month period “appear to be adult-related sites”. Nine of these websites were found to contain sexually explicit images of young people. The age of those pictured in these images may be under 16 though that is the subject of further investigations.
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