Sex-obsessed Federal bureaucrats threaten nation’s security with porn-surfing habits

washingtontimes. ^ | May 11 2014 | By Jim McElhatton

[dennisw]

Two hours a day, a General Services Administration employee visited dating websites, scoured the Internet for pornography and e maintained a user account at an X-rated social networking site.

Ultimately, a computer virus from a porn site infected the employee’s email, sending a mass message to everyone in the account’s GSA address book titled “check out my pictures,” according to records obtained through Freedom of Information Act.

The case shows porn in the federal workplace poses a security risk, giving computer viruses inroads to attack government servers. Records obtained by The Washington Times through the Freedom of Information Act show that the Environmental Protection Agency is hardly the only agency with a porn problem.

Last week, congressional lawmakers heard about an EPA official, still employed, who spent up to six hours a day looking at porn.

The GSA, the Treasury Department, the Postal Service, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other agencies also have had employees investigated in recent years. Porn scandals also have hit the National Science Foundation, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Pentagon.

“It’s a big problem everywhere,” said Sharon Nelson, president Sensei Enterprises Inc., a computer forensics firm. The same issues appear in the private sector.

“We have actually done audits of particular individuals where the individual was so valuable that people didn’t want to fire them, but yet they can’t stop looking at pornography,” she said, referring to an unidentified private-sector client.

The risk for the government is that many free porn sites secretly sell the ability to spread malware, Ms. Nelson said.

“Many of them are run by cybercriminals who are less interested in pornography than spreading the malware,” she said. “If they give away free porn and they can inject malware, they can make a lot more money from the information they derive.”

[Cicero]

Why don’t Bammy & Harry start a new federal agency, the Department of Porn Watchers? Federal bureaucrats could move over to the new agency without losing any of their vacation time, retirement benefits, or other perks.

That way they could keep a close watch on porn and make sure that it was fair and balanced.

[dennisw]

WE would be a lot better off if the entire EPA spent their time porn surfing

[andyk]

where the individual was so valuable that people didn’t want to fire them

Holy crap. No one is irreplaceable.

[subterfuge]

So who’s getting fired?

Nobody. It was a trick question.

[ZULU]

EXACTLY. The whole rotten passel of Federal bureaucrats - with limited exceptions.

[Vigilanteman]

Wonderful idea! And they can even collect and post pictures and sell subscriptions to a porn site guaranteed to be Malware Free. < / sarcasm >

[USNBandit]

I work for an agency where the computers are so locked I have sometimes not been able to get on the NOAA aviation weather website. I don't know how this guy is surfing porn from his desktop.

That isn't to say that people in my agency haven't gotten caught surfing porn. I know a guy that had a stand alone laptop issued for a specific programming need.......and he used it to surf porn. He was fired. I know another guy that got stuck on a night watch by himself. The computer from our agency blocked all of that content, but a DoD computer at the watch station didn't........you guessed it. He didn't get fired.

[wbarmy]

This has been going on for awhile. All of the Federal agencies except for DoD have this problem. (DoD will kill our security clearance and throw us out on our fourth point of contact). Of course there are always defenders, if we cut their funding no science will get done in the U.S. (sarc)

http://www.science.slashdot.org/story/09/09/29/1430259/Porn-Surfing-Rampant-At-US-Science-Foundation

http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1289

http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2009/01/will-porn-searches-cost-scientists-3-billion/

http://blogs.plos.org/neurotribes/2011/05/27/why-the-gop-hates-the-national-science-foundation/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/29/porn-surfing-rampant-at-u_n_303452.html

[scbison]

umm, I work at GSA and never saw the email. If you are inside GSA firewall, it blocks anything with questionable content. The guys must have been surfing before logging into gsa and thought he was okay.. moron.