Lawmakers and their staff working in the Massachusetts legislature are banned from using Twitter on their office computers, according to a report in the Boston Herald. The legislature's IT department recently put the site on the blocked list, maintaining that it is vulnerable to viruses.

Some legislators have voiced their opposition to the ban, but others praised it as a way to cut back on wasted time on the tax payers' dime. Other social media sites, including Facebook, are not banned, according to the report, but that could change. "This place has enough distractions already," said Sen. Robert Hedlund, "There should be more sites that are blocked. We should also ban solitaire, Bejeweled and Farmville."

Other state government offices still allow the use of Twitter on computers, and lawmakers can access the site in the State House via their smartphones.

For more:
- see Joe Battenfeld's article at the Boston Herald

Related Articles:
CIOs say Twitter helps them recruit, crowdsource and combat group think
Employee social media use and the law
Report: Facebook users in the workplace are "voyeurs"
Survey: Many CIOs getting stricter about social networking