Japanese official suspended for surfing porn at work

 

TOKYO (Reuters) - A city bureaucrat in western Japan was suspended from his job after officials discovered he visited porn websites at work almost every day, often spending hours gazing at nude photos, a city official said.

 

The 57-year-old man, who was working in the construction division of Kinokawa City in Wakayama, surfed porn sites from an office computer almost every day for eight months from June 2007, spending up to three hours a day on the websites, said Kazuhiko Ueyama, a Kinokawa City official.

Angered citizens called city hall all day on Friday, saying the suspension was not enough, he added.

The city only found out about his activities in February when it noticed that his computer had picked up the same virus repeatedly from the sites, Ueyama said.

"These were foreign 'adult sites' and they got through the security net" that the city had installed for its computers, he said.

"The man apologized each time we spoke to him, but we couldn't quite get him to explain to us why he did this," Ueyama added.

The bureaucrat was suspended from the office for three months and was demoted as of Thursday, Ueyama said.

(Reporting by Yoko Kubota; Editing by David Fox)