Hundreds of Feds Caught Watching Porn at Work
Investigation finds 'egregious' cases involving government workers watching 6 hours a day, child porn
BY:
Hundreds
of federal workers have been caught watching porn on the job, including
viewing child pornography, according to a new investigation.
NBC News 4 in
Washington, D.C., identified over 100 "egregious" cases during the past
five years where federal employees watched porn for hours during the
day or required an inspector general investigation into their porn
habits at work. The report relied on records obtained through Freedom of
Information Act from 12 separate government agencies.
"The
cases include workers who admitted spending six hours a day surfing
illicit images and videos and maintaining tens of thousands of adult
images on their office desktops," the report said.
The
investigation revealed over 20 cases at the Justice Department during
the past two years, and numerous cases at the Environmental Protection
Agency.
The
report includes the notorious case of an EPA employee in the Office of
Air and Radiation who, while earning a $120,000 salary, watched porn
between two and six hours every day, masturbated at work, and received bonuses.
The
employee said that "‘a lot' of his time each workday is spent
‘organizing' the pornography he downloaded into saved folders,"
according to the records obtained by NBC News 4.
The
report noted that although being caught watching porn "opens employees
to possible disciplinary action," including being fired, several
agencies said penalties are "flexible" and can carry just a written
reprimand.
The EPA employee was not fired and stayed on the payroll for years even though he had been banned from the building. He continued to receive his six-figure salary for two years after being caught, including a year of paid leave before he retired in April 2015.
"This is not just an isolated incident at one single agency," said Rep. Mark Meadows (R., N.C.), who is pushing legislation for a zero tolerance policy toward viewing pornography on government computers. "We're starting to find it across almost every agency."
New
cases uncovered by NBC News 4 included another EPA employee in San
Francisco who watched porn at work an average of two hours a day, and an
EPA contractor in North Carolina who viewed porn for three to four
hours a day.
Workers
at a Department of Transportation office in Washington, D.C., that was
monitored for two months were found to be searching on government
computers for "teen+underwear+blonde," "teen+slut+tight+pants,"
"orgy+prague+OR+Czech," and "petite+blonde+teen."
A
Department of Justice worker in Tucson, Ariz., visited 2,500 adult
websites and downloaded over 1,100 pornographic pictures at work,
spending the "majority of his duty time viewing inappropriate adult
websites."
Another
Justice employee in Dallas, Texas, watched porn between four and six
hours every day at work and had "tens of thousands" of pornographic
pictures on a work computer, "including some which might have been child
pornography."
Several
other cases involved child pornography as well, including an FBI
employee in Virginia who had explicit email exchanges with a ninth
grader and admitted to "receiving, viewing, and saving approximately 50
images of suspected child pornography."
The
investigation covered the departments of Transportation, Justice,
Interior, Labor, Commerce, Energy, and Health and Human Services, as
well as the U.S. Postal Service, NASA, Export-Import Bank, the EPA, and
the Social Security Administration.
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