Internet Porn Sites Accessed From Pasadena Schools

Pasadena school officials said Friday that computers on their campuses had been used to access Internet pornography sites.

The announcement came three months after the district severed its employees’ home access to the Internet after finding that workers had signed on to more than 100 pornographic sites.

Friday’s discovery was particularly upsetting to school activists because the sites were accessed from buildings where children study.

“This is repugnant and obscene,” said parent Rene Amy, a longtime school district foe. “This could be a teacher, an administrator or a school board member. We don’t know. Anybody involved in educating teenagers should not be involved in accessing sites with pictures of teens.”

School officials say that, because passwords are shared, they have been unable to determine the identities of the pornography viewers.

District spokeswoman Betsy Richman said the board will implement new policies within a few weeks to track Internet use and punish those who access pornographic sites.

“We don’t condone it,” Richman said of the pornography viewing. But, she added, “we will not conduct a witch hunt. This isn’t Salem.”

She said the question of how to limit workplace viewing of Internet pornography has bedeviled large corporations. But because the Internet is an essential educational tool, she said, there are no plans to shut off access to the computer network.

After last year’s Internet pornography incident, Amy demanded a list of all World Wide Web sites that had been accessed from Pasadena Unified School District computers since July.

He said that when he received the 24 disks of that information Thursday he found several pornographic sites, including some portraying teenagers and others with names referring to teenagers and sex.

He said it also appeared that all identifying information--such as the passwords and terminals used--had been deleted from the disks.

Richman said passwords had been deleted due to “personnel issues.”

The Pasadena district gets its Internet access through the Los Angeles County Office of Education, which has placed filters on its programs to screen out pornography sites.

Some users apparently got around those filters, officials said.