The Presidential Office has allegedly issued directives to its employees barring them from using the Google search engine as well as online social networking sites such as MSN and Facebook to avoid becoming the victims of hackers, reports said yesterday.
In addition, an employee at the Presidential Office said on condition of anonymity, that staff could not use Gmail at work, as they all had Presidential Office e-mail accounts.
Despite the directive regarding Gmail accounts, the source said employees who had special work-related requirements, such as the need to contact a large group of people such as reporters, could apply for permission.
“It [the directive] is mainly for security reasons,” the source said.
The same rule applied to MSN and YouTube, while Facebook was entirely forbidden, the source said, adding that he was still able to access Google from his office computer.
The Chinese-language United Daily News reported yesterday that an individual had recently sent a letter to the Presidential Office Web site complaining about a response from the Presidential Office, which told the person that it could not link to a YouTube image she had sent because Presidential Office staff were not allowed to access YouTube.
In addition to YouTube, the -report said that Presidential Office employees were also not allowed to access Facebook, MSN, YahooKimo and Google.
James Buu (卜正?民), deputy director of the Public Affairs Office of the Presidential Office, said presidential staff should be able to use Google, but that Gmail access was forbidden without special permission.
Buu denied that access to YouTube had been banned, saying it was allowed again after the new Presidential Office Web site was launched in June.
As for Facebook, Buu said that while, for reasons unclear, he had had a hard time logging in, some colleagues had succeeded.
Buu said staff at the Presidential Office had been careful with potential hacker attacks and scrupulous after the new Web site was launched. If a hack is identified, the problem must be resolved within two hours, he said.
“We are using the least amount of money in return for the best protection,” he said.
The redesign of the Presidential Office Web site cost between NT$6 million (US$187,000) and NT$7 nillion.
The report also said the Executive Yuan was under constant hacker attacks, with an average of 22,000 junk mail every day. About 500 attacks were identified every month, or 20 per day, it said.
An employee at the Executive Yuan who asked not to be named said staff had not been able to access MSN for a long time. However, Google, Facebook and Gmail and other e-mail services could be accessed.
She said that although she did not dare ask why MSN could not be accessed, she suspected supervisors did not want employees to spend time during office hours social networking over the Internet.
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