Birmingham Council faces legal threat over internet filtering

[FN-GM]

irmingham City Council could be facing legal action after it installed an internet filtering system that breaks religious discrimination rules.

The system, Bluecoat WebFilter, allows computer users to view sites on a variety of religious organizations, including Christianity, Islam and Hinduism but blocks those that cover "occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism."

Lawyers from the National Secular Society are examining the system and have said they may take legal action under religious discrimination laws.

We suspect that the Council have not set out to contravene or reverse their own equal employment policies and that this problem results from someone in the Council acting in a thoughtless way, said National Secular Society president Terry Sanderson.

We just hope that common sense prevails and the Council resolves the matter itself without submitting themselves needlessly to legal action which would bring more unwelcome publicity.

A city council statement said the authority had a "long-standing internet usage policy for staff".

It added: "We are currently implementing new internet monitoring software to make the control of internet access easier to manage.

"The aim of this is to provide greater control for individual line managers to monitor internet usage, and for departments, such as trading standards and child protection, to gain access, if needed, to certain sites for business reasons."

Birmingham Council faces legal threat over internet filtering - Yahoo! News UK

[My220x]

You are kidding me?

[wizzard]

I see they haven't actually addressed the reason for certain sites relgious sites being blocked, however being as it is a new system thay they have installed it's still going to need tweaking, so in my opinion they should be given chance to alter the filters before everyone starts jumping up and down over this.

[KarlGoddard]

couldn't the complainants just put a hex on the people who implemented the filtering software...

[Andrew_C]

couldn't the complainants just put a hex on the people who implemented the filtering software...

Not hugely likely.

Secular \Sec"u*lar\, a. [OE. secular, seculer. L. saecularis, fr. saeculum a race, generation, age, the times, the world; perhaps akin to E. soul: cf. F. s['e]culier.]

1. Coming or observed once in an age or a century.

2. Pertaining to an age,

3. Of or pertaining to this present world, or to things not spiritual or holy; relating to temporal as distinguished from eternal interests; not immediately or primarily respecting the soul, but the body; worldly.

New foes arise, Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains. --Milton.

4. (Eccl.) Not regular; not bound by monastic vows or rules; not confined to a monastery, or subject to the rules of a religious community; as, a secular priest.

He tried to enforce a stricter discipline and greater regard for morals, both in the religious orders and the secular clergy. --Prescett.

5. Belonging to the laity; lay; not clerical.

And in answer to the other poster; More power to Nat Sec Soc! Religions hold far too much power in most societies. Turkey nearly banned another government for being too religious. They seem to have it about right.