Shelby County – Yes, They Should Be Pissed – As Should The Public

Shelby Co. (ECWd) –

In a previous article, we shared the video of the Shelby County Legislative Committee meeting where they were informed they would be pissed if they knew what was going on with county computers on the internet.

Shelby County adopts a tax levy every year that is paid by property owners in the county. Those funds received go towards the operations of the county, which includes payroll and benefits for employees.  Are those hard-earned dollars meant to be spent on matters having next to nothing to do with county business?

We agree with Mr. Woods, the committee should be pissed, as should the entire county board and the public.  We believe immediate action should take place to protect the taxpayers from further theft of honest services.  Those responsible for what appears to be nonpublic business on public time should be held accountable.

According to key computer log information, there is a list of the top 10 internet domains visited each month.  The following appears on just about every monthly report.

• Nflxvideo.net – Netflix video entertainment streaming service
• Peacocktv.com – TV Streaming services
• FVCDN.net – Facebook Social Media
• TicTok – Online video hosting service
• TTVNW.net- “ttvnw.net domain is associated with the Twitch application.  Twitch is the world’s leading video platform and community for gamers. More than 45 million gamers gather every month on Twitch to broadcast, watch and chat about gaming.” (Netify)
  
• Hulustream.com – Hulu video entertainment streaming services
• Reddit – A social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website
• Foxnews.com – Fox News Channel

These sites account for anywhere from 20%-40% of internet traffic during a month.  Netflix appears to be the most popular with one month accounting for 17.5% of the traffic.

We believe the public has a right to know at some point, who is accessing these sites during work hours and at what cost to the county.  If people are spending their time surfing the internet, live streaming videos, and playing games rather than working, should the taxpayers be paying for that time? Should those employees be held accountable?

I think most agree such activity during work hours is improper and needs to come to a screeching halt at a minimum.

And for those who want to point to public wifi access being used and making it OK, we agree, if such usage is only on their own time and on their own devices.  The problem, in this case, is that is not always the case.

We understand this matter is part of a larger investigation and key elements of the report are not able to be released at this time.  We will update you when more information is releasable.