back to article Wales auditor arrested over indecent images allegations

Jeremy Colman, the ex-Auditor General for Wales, has been arrested on suspicion of possessing indecent images. Colman quit his £170,000 a year job last week "following an internal review around matters of personal conduct". Reports suggested IT staff had found pornographic material on his laptop. South Wales Police told the …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Can we have some clarity?

    Was the arrest because the alleged images were indecent, or was it because they were pornographic? The article uses both terms, but they are by no means interchangeable. The only pornographic images that are illegal to possess are those deemed "extreme", whereas the only indecent images that are illegal are those of minors.

  2. Richard Porter
    Stop

    The IT staff were horrified!

    I don't suppose any of them them enjoyed the porn. I mean, they wouldn't have added it to their stashes would they?

    Let him that is without porn cast the first stone.

  3. Paul 25
    FAIL

    Not very bright

    If he's dumb enough to browse porn on his work laptop then he's probably no great loss to the civil service.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Not very bright"

      That's pretty much the whole of the Civil Service then.

    2. Rod MacLean

      RE: Not very bright

      Well, for one thing, he overlooked the fact that £170,000 a year can buy a hell of a lot of home/pr0n laptops!

      I suspect that this has more to do with beating one out on his employers time than the content of the images....but I'm pretty sure there will be a follow up from El Reg when he gets strung up for whatever it is he's done.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Disgusting...

    ...that the state bullies and vilifies ordinary people for the pictures they choose to look at.

    What a disgrace. So, not that it matters (if they are that terrible the police should be focusing on tracking down those who MADE the images...but they never seem to...go figure) but what exactly were these horrific, unthinkable, despicable images? Seeing as it's obviosuly serious enough to warrant ruining this mans life by publishing his personal details.

    1. Bilgepipe

      Indecent

      As mentioned above the term "indecent" implies pictures of minors, You would prefer that viewers of child pr0n are simply ignored because of their right to choose pictures to look at? It's right that the creators should be pursued too, but the viewers are just as culpable - and under US federal law they are, with viewing being on a par with producing.

      If he's been looking at kiddie pr0n he needs stringing up. End of.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Indecent

        Don't become part of the kiddie porn witch hunt..

        If it doest say "kiddie porn" then it wasn't "kiddie porn"...end of.

        Any porn can be described as indecent if you choose.

      2. Allan George Dyer
        FAIL

        Indecent != Kiddie Pr0n

        Indecent images of an adult, for example, are most definitely NOT kiddie pr0n. You're Constable Savage really, aren't you?

    2. lglethal Silver badge
      FAIL

      Not sure i agree with you...

      I mean who is stupid enough to look at porn on a work laptop? And even more stupidly to download the porn on to the work laptop? Thats what home PC's are for... ;)

      Now im not sure why he's been arrested as it doesnt say that he had anything illegal on his laptop so i dont see why the police are involved, but if your stupid enough to do this then you can expect to lose your job and be publically embarrased (you or i might not get our names in the newspaper if we were this stupid but you can guarantee that everyone in the office would know and word gets around to other companies amazingly quickly in most industries!).

      If you havent got the self-control to hold off from looking at porn until you get home in the eveninng, then you really need to get some help... and you definitely shouldnt be a high level public servant!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Thumb Down

        Not sure I agree with you...

        "If you havent got the self-control to hold off from looking at porn until you get home in the eveninng, then you really need to get some help... and you definitely shouldnt be a high level public servant!"

        The first sentence is supposition, the last is your opinion which seems to have been based on that supposition.

        That, is pretty much the definition of a "knee jerk reaction".

        And the behaviour of a Commentard.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          I took the first sentence as implying...

          ...that, for eggs, maybe he didn't put the pr0n on the laptop? Then the paragraph you quote would be one possible scenario rather than the knee-jerk reaction?

        2. lglethal Silver badge
          FAIL

          Ok to be fair

          Ok to be fair your technically right...

          On the first sentence - he could have looked at the porn in the evening, however, he still did it from his work laptop which a) means he's a dumbass, b) deserves to be fired, and c) raises some distinct questions about the IT security at the auditor general's office. Laptops with the sort of data that an auditor's office would be looking at, are not the sort of thing i would want unsecured and open to every website and torrent on the planet (every work laptop ive used has been very strict on what websites can be visited from it, just like at the office). This laptop appears to have had poor internet protection protocols on it if he was able to visit porn sites or download torrents of porn (and yes im aware that there are other ways he could have got porn (e.g. transferred from a USB stick) but lets be honest how likely is that?

          On the last sentence - yes that is my opinion and i standby it. If your that stupid, i do not want you in charge of any public department, just like i wouldnt want you in charge of a private company's department that i'm a customer of. The difference is that i can choose a different private company for my services if i find the management of a private company to be stupid, you cant choose to use a replacement government department for many public services...

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Actually

            I was thinking maybe he knew bugger all about it ala the Julie Amero case. I should have emphasised 'he'. But I guess he wouldn't have resigned quite so promptly, if at all, in that case. All of which I guess amounts to my response being a knee-jerk reaction to your comment. LOL!

            As for the poor internet security, the opposite would have surprised me. Perhaps that is the point at which one's cynicism interferes with one's judgement.

  5. James Hughes 1

    What was he thinking?

    I would have thought the only arrestable imagery would be pretty bad stuff AND WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MINDS puts this sort of stuff on a work laptop.

    Numpty. Or worse.

  6. John Square

    Must have...

    ...been pretty outre stuff for the plod to be involved.

    Or not, thinking about it. Under the currrent government, a cached Page 3 image fropm the Sun website would probably do it...

  7. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Upon further investigation...

    It was also discovered that Jeremy Colman had a fully functioning dick in his pants and more often than not, walked amongst work colleagues and other and members of the public with it concealed in his underwear.

    t's not like he was distributing the porn to minors on company time or incorporated naughty pictures into a presentation to the board of directors about a new cost cutting strategy (which would be far more amusing). Or even forced people to look at it.

    I fail to see the big issue here.

    Witch hunt for a break of HR policy? Do away with someone close to retirement to save a wad of pension cash? I dunno...

  8. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    OK

    so he was fired / resigned for using a work laptop for porn, fair enough.... but why was he arrested? Unless it was extreme or kiddie porn its not illegal, and teh metion of 'indecent1' hardly seems extreme

  9. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Could mean anything these days

    Could just be photo's of his grandkids in a swimming pool or prancing around naked or in a nappy like we all used to as children without our parents having to fear being arrested as a paedo.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Planted

    I bet he placed his laptop with a PFY to be fixed just a few weeks ago.

  11. h4rm0ny
    Paris Hilton

    Why a work laptop?

    Well who knows, but if he's on a $170k job there's a good chance he spends a lot of time away from home. It would look pretty odd to be hauling his home desktop away with him. And who knows where on the laptop it was. There could be a folder on the Desktop marked "Donkey Porn", but then again, there could just be some naked men / women in the browser cache.

    As to the police, well they arrest people all the time, sometimes just so they can pad statistics. The headline becomes more serious when it reads: "charged..." Convicted is the right point to think about judging though. But anyway, the new laws criminalise just about anything so even if he's convicted of child pornography it could just be a hentai video that looked underage to some judge.

    Paris. Because for all we know it could have been her on his laptop.

    1. James Hughes 1

      16GB memory stick

      Should be enough so he never has to store anything on the laptop itself. Or YouPorn and private mode on your browser. Oh, hang on, this is government, they will be using IE6. No stealth mode.

  12. motar
    Linux

    Work employment rules and regs.

    It is quite normal to have to agreed some kind of rules when you are working for local goverment.

    These tend to be far more strict than the law requires.

    The code of conduct in local gov is very pc focus and not that flexible.

    Porn of any kind is a big no no.

    You also agreeded when you signed you cantract of employment.

    This could be why hi was suspended and the police call, so that his employers are fully cover if he sues then.

  13. Andus McCoatover
    FAIL

    £170,000?

    > $260,000 - Thrown that much money away, for a hand shandy?

    Pension up the wall. Career shot to bits. Wife (BBC photo. shows wedding ring) probably going to divorce, and take half the house/posessions/all the kids/Sex Offenders register for life?

    I just hope it's not true, for his sake.

    What the fuc*k was he thinking of?? (OK, we know, but...)

    Beggars belief. Self-destruction personified. I'd feel sorry for him, if it wasn't so disastrous.

    EPIC FAIL.

  14. JohnG

    £170k salary and intelligence

    Anybody paid this sort of money should have the smarts not to get caught - how much is a USB stick these days? Also, he wasn't paid £170K from tax payers' money to sit in his office wanking.

  15. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

    Scared

    I thought the performance of Tony Blair at the Chilcot Inquiry was pretty indecent - are we all going to be arrested for watching the BBC now?

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