An epidemic of federal employees watching porn on taxpayer time has reached a new low at one agency where a veteran staffer “viewed child pornography on a government computer on multiple occasions,” according to an audit. The unidentified employee worked at the Bureau of Land Management, which operates under the Department of the Interior (DOI) and admitted to investigators from the agency’s Inspector General’s office that he viewed adult pornography on multiple occasions though he knew DOI policy prohibits it. A year ago, a separate DOI employee infected agency networks with Russian malware after visiting thousands of porn sites on his government computer. A forensic examination determined the employee, who was never identified, had an extensive history of visiting porn websites and saving material on an unauthorized drive. In both cases the employees retired and faced no consequences.
The DOI is hardly alone in the ongoing porn scandal. Watching porn on government computers during work hours is so rampant that legislation (Eliminating Pornography from Agencies Act) was introduced in Congress a few years ago to contain the embarrassing crisis. Porn has for years been part of the job at some government agencies and numerous federal audits have long documented the enraging details of how our tax dollars are being wasted. Judicial Watch has also reported extensively on the topic, especially the porn crisis at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the agency charged with policing the nation’s financial industry. While the economy crumbled, the SEC was preoccupied with pornography. In fact, high-ranking managers at the agency regularly spent work hours gawking at pornography web sites on their government computers while the country’s financial system collapsed. We’re talking dozens of SEC employees, including senior officers with lucrative six-figure salaries viewing explicit images on their agency computers during work hours.
Other agencies have also been embroiled in porn scandals evidently making legislation necessary. Among them is the National Science Foundation (NSF), which has been exposed by its inspector general for having employees spend significant portions of their workdays watching, downloading and e-mailing pornography on government computers without ever getting caught. This workday porn surfing costs American taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars, according to the agency watchdog. In one case a senior NSF executive spent at least 331 days viewing porn on his government computer and chatting online with naked women without getting caught. A separate employee accessed hundreds of pornographic web sites during work hours in a three-week period and another was caught with hundreds of photos, videos and slide shows containing porn. None of the public employees was subject to criminal prosecution, civil court action or debarment, though some got suspended for short periods of time.
About a year ago the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) was embroiled in a large-scale pornography scandal in which hundreds of websites were used by employees and contractors to watch porn on government computers during work hours. The problem was so widespread that the USDA IG issued agency leadership a management alert memo warning of a “significant increase” in the number of USDA employees and contractors viewing and sharing unlawful or otherwise inappropriate pornographic content using their government-issued computers and other communication devices. Some of the content includes child pornography, according to the USDA OIG memo. “This employee misconduct is preventable, and it unnecessarily exposes USDA and its systems to significant risk,” the OIG memo states. USDA leadership took five months to address the problem even though the watchdog harped on the security risks of surfing the dicey websites on agency equipment. It didn’t even delve into the atrocity of public employees getting paid by taxpayers to enjoy porn.
