It’s not the first scandal having to do with government employees getting paid by the taxpayers to watch pornography on their government-provided computers.
Washington Watchdog Judicial Watch previously reported on that activity at the Securities and Exchange Commission, where managers watched pornographic videos at a time when the economy was crumbling.
In the latest case, Judicial Watch points out it took five months for managers of the Department of Agriculture to block the offensive websites accessed by employees and contractors even after they were told of the problem.
The department’s inspector general said it was back in September when an assistant inspector general reported the concerns had arisen as early as 2015.
“The majority of referrals involve some type of pornography (i.e., USDA employees and contractors viewing, and/or sharing, unlawful and/or otherwise inappropriate pornographic content using their government-issued computers and other communications devices),” the IG said.
The IG suggested using “current software” to block “these prohibited websites.”
However, Judicial Watch revealed, “It wasn’t until late last month that the agency’s Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) acknowledged a problem and announced that, beginning this week, more than 400 websites will be blocked.”
An email from USDA chief information security officer Chris Lowe to the agency’s more than 100,000 employees said many sites were being blocked.
Judicial Watch describes the USDA as “a bloated agency notorious for wasteful spending and an eye-popping $140 billion budget,” simply to “provide leadership on food, agriculture, natural resources, rural development, nutrition and related issues.”
The IG report “blasted the agency for misusing information technology networks to view pornographic content on government-issued computers and other communication devices. In a management alert memo the watchdog revealed 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.”
It said, “This employee misconduct is preventable, and it unnecessarily exposes USDA and its systems to significant risk.”
Judicial Watch said the USDA watchdog “harps on the security risks of surfing these dicey websites on agency equipment but fails to mention the atrocity of public employees getting paid by taxpayers to enjoy porn.”
“Websites that disseminate pornographic material historically have proven themselves to be a network attack vector and, as such, present an ideal opportunity for those individuals who would seek to compromise a USDA employee or contractor for the purpose of extorting access to the department’s network(s) and/or sensitive or classified information,” the IG report said.
The federal employee porn epidemic was seen earlier at the SEC, where “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. One senior attorney at the SEC headquarters in Washington, D.C., spent up to eight hours a day accessing internet porn. When his government computer ran out of file space, he downloaded pornographic images on compact discs and stored them in boxes in his office. One agency accountant tried to access porn websites 16,000 times in one month and got busted with hundreds of pornographic images on her computer hard drive. Another SEC accountant used his government computer to upload his own sexually explicit videos onto various porn websites that he frequented during business hours,” Judicial Watch documented.
National Science Foundation workers also have been caught in the same activity.
