Unclear on the concept

It's the late 1990s, and this insurance company decides to give all users access to the Internet. So the company puts in a T1 line — along with a content-filtering firewall, of course.

"All employees were filtered except for those of the director and executive ranks — they needed to be able to check their stock prices and sport scores," says a pilot fish there.

But for all other users, IT's mandate is clear: Review the firewall logs to make sure that employees aren't viewing inappropriate sites, and report violations directly to the CEO.

In the course of those regular reviews, fish and his cohorts notice that one user is visiting pornographic Web sites. And it doesn't seem to be accidental or occasional; this is happening a lot.

After identifying exactly whose PC is involved, IT contacts the user and asks why he's viewing porn at work.

"The answer we got back was, 'Since I review surgical malpractice cases involving breast augmentation, I need to reference what an unadulterated set of breasts looks like,' says dubious fish.

"We reported this back to the CEO — and he agreed."

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