Army computers get Web filters
Advertiser Staff and News Services
The Army has installed software at bases including Fort Shafter and Schofield Barracks as part of an ongoing effort at more than 100 military posts worldwide to prevent employees from viewing pornography and other inappropriate material.
Websense Inc.
The Army said the $1.8 million purchase of Web-filtering software from San Diego-based Websense Inc. is intended to prevent some 200,000 members of the Army from gaining access to porn, gambling and other sites prohibited on government computers.
The Army has contracted with Websense Inc. to restrict employee access to certain kinds of Internet sites, particularly those offering pornography and gambling. The company maintains a database of prohibited sites, and scours the Web daily to keep it updated. About 35,000 computers use the filters in the Pacific theater, including 15,000 at Army bases in Hawai'i.
The purchase comes as the Army also struggles with the problem of sexual harassment in its ranks.
Asked if the Army had a problem with soldiers viewing porn on the Internet, Karen Baker, a Pentagon-based Army spokeswoman, replied: "Probably no more than society at large."
"We don't maintain any data on this type of activity," she said, "but we employ human beings."
U.S. Army Pacific, which covers Hawai'i, Alaska, Japan, Guam and other Pacific islands, started installation of the software on its networks in October of last year, and completed installation in January, said spokesman Joe Bonfiglio.
The Web filtering is used on 15,000 computers in Hawai'i and 35,000 computers throughout the Pacific theater, he said.
The Web filter also covers computers at installations including Fort DeRussy, Wheeler Army Airfield, Tripler Army Medical Center and the Pohakuloa Training Area on the Big Island.
The software downloads an updated list of unauthorized sites every night, and blocks Web sites involving pornography, hate and racism. It also blocks anonymous sites.
Each base will decide what sites to block in accordance with Army policies, said Stephen Larsen, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command Systems Management Center in New Jersey.
Company officials at Websense, which reported revenues of more than $17 million last year, called the Army contract the largest-ever deployment of software designed to manage employee use of the Internet.
Websense counts General Motors, Pepsi and Shell Oil and more than 75 government agencies, including the National Guard and U.S. Army Reserve, among its customers.
Andy Meyer, Websense's vice president of marketing, said most of its government clients bought the software to improve employee productivity. However, he declined to go into specifics about the Army's purchase.
"They don't want us to talk about it," he said.
The company says besides improving productivity by eliminating distractions, the software promises to "reduce the liabilities associated with Internet use."
Employers can be sued if they don't make the best efforts to eradicate pornography in the workplace, Meyer said. Sexual harassment lawsuits involving allegations of porn in the workplace have forced employers to pay costly verdicts and settlements.
The Army has been hit by a series of embarrassing high-profile sexual harassment scandals, including disclosures in 1997 that drill sergeants at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland preyed on female trainees.
A massive sexual harassment study ordered by Army Secretary Togo West in the wake of the Aberdeen scandal found inappropriate behavior was commonplace and that soldiers accepted such behavior as part of normal Army life.
