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.
If the government really wants to eliminate employees from viewing porn on work computers make them sign an agreement that if they do so, then when caught their name will be posted on line and they will be fired without any compensation.
sure they can watch porn…. us fellow taxpayers are paying for it! why wouldn’t they. it’s all free and besides they had nothing else to do.. we the people need to wake up and really smell the coffee as far as they’re are concerned we are sheep to the slaughter…
Some of us are reading something into this article that isn’t there— specifically, that government employees get treated more leniently by our justice system than do the private sector when it comes to computer sex crimes.
But the article does not even discuss our justice system and barely touches on crimes.
If you got a job with the government and then committed a sex crime on your government-issued computer, just what do you think would happen to you? They’d just let you retire? Possibly, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Once again government is doing sex crime and no punishment lets go people start writing getting the word out let government know that sex offender are going to fight back especially when you are charge for that too
I imagine they were punished. The agencies audited, they weren’t punished, but the individual perpetrators, most likely the FBI was all over them.
I definitely agree with you on that it’s very unfair my son was charged with cp on an adult site he wasn’t even looking for it but it popped up several times after he clicked on a chat link invite and he had to take a plea deal and face the consequences so why should government employees be treated any different? I don’t wish this on anyone of course but like most of us we pay the consequences and they don’t have to and the consequences are horrible being on the registry is very hard we live in pb county Fl my sons having trouble finding a job and can’t live with us either it’s just hard so it hurts when you see others treated differently.
And we are the ones who are considered sexual deviants.
I wonder how many of the jerks viewing porn online have security clearances?
You might be shocked to find out how many people with security clearances view porn on a regular basis. But I’m not sure that question is even asked in the annual interviews. And if it is, it sure dopesn’t hold any weight.
This even isn’t shocking. We have a president that grabbed women by their pu$$y and went into the dressing room of the Miss TEEN USA pageant to “inspect” the contestants. Oh that thing about having sex with Stormy and a playmate. Since he paid Stormy does that make the president guilty of human trafficking like what happened to Robert Kraft. No it’s all just locker room talk. Fake news. Witchhunt. The most used words on Twitter!
First of all let’s not turn this into a Trump hating platform. There’s plenty of that on other social media. I love how liberals give Bill Clinton a pass for putting a cigar into the pssy of Monica Lewinski while being a SITTING PRESIDENT.
When Trump said “grab them by the pssy” he was referring to GROUPIES. I’m sure you’re at an age to remember what a “groupie” is. And for those who need it spelled out for you; It’s women who typically offer sexual favors to get to meet a celebrity (like offering oral sex to security guards to get backstage at a Kiss concert or Peter Frampton, Bruce Springsteen, etc, etc). Most likely still a practice that goes on today. So stop losing sleep over what a Republican President SAID BEFORE HE WAS PRESIDENT and let’s stick to the topic which is that once you’re in a job of high status to a district or the country as whole, you should not be using your PAID TJME to indulge in cigar play with an intern or watching pornography when you should be working for the PEOPLE.
Well said Maestro. Very well said.
Wasn’t well said at all. But hey, unlike what Maestro did, let’s not talk about specifics.
I like Maestro’s comments and stances nearly always, but he/she is way off here.
Isn’t this already a Trump hating platform? All should be.
If you didn’t want to talk about Trump then why did you AND include an attack on Clinton? Since we ARE apparently talking about it, the two people aren’t comparable in any way.
No politics here please
I wonder, then, how bad it is in the business world.
Hopefully those viewing minors have been held to account
I assume there will be some “government gets away with it” responses to this story, but that’s not necessarily the case.
“Hopefully those viewing minors have been held to account.” Anyone charged by the feds for child porn should know about Operation Flicker. The aim on Operation Flicker was to shut down child pornography on the internet, but in the process, they found that many government and military personnel were viewing and downloading child pornography on their government computers. This operation has been kept fairly quiet, for obvious reasons.
I suppose that many of those viewing kiddie porn had security clearances?
That was part of the concern— that in addition to the usual problems with this type of material, people with clearances were opening themselves up to the risk of blackmail. Some of them were Pentagon contractors.
If you read about Operation Flicker, yes. Some 5,000 cases of civilians were prosecuted, but few of the thousands involved at high levels of government were prosecuted. There are definitely differences criminal justice systems in this country, not just one with “equal justice.”
It’s true that Operation Flicker netted about 5,000 suspects (ie, about 5,000 names in a database of people who purchased subscriptions to this material), some of whom had security clearances and therefore were viewed as a bigger problem.
But It’s normal for not all suspects to become convicts, and I’m not aware that any of these 5,000 names were associated with any high officials.
Dream on. It sounds like they were not charged criminally. Retirement for some, others are probably still at their jobs. It’s truly a scandal and not fair to those who don’t waste our tax dollars. It’s not fair either to those in the private sector who are arrested, put in prison or on strict probation and given decades or a lifetime on a public registry for all to see.
I also don’t understand what good the legislation is since this seems to be an ongoing problem.
When someone is caught with this type of material depicting minors, normally they are prosecuted. Not once have I heard of anyone given a pass (or even a lighter sentence) just because they had been a government employee.