Law Introduced to Curb Porn Crisis in Govt. Agencies

An epidemic of federal employees watching pornography on government computers during work hours has gotten so out of control that legislation has been introduced in Congress to contain the embarrassing crisis.

Porn has for years been part of the job at some government agencies and in fact a number of federal audits have long documented the enraging details of how our tax dollars are being wasted. Judicial Watch has also reported on this for years, 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. 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.

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, yet the NSF keeps receiving monstrous allocations from Congress every year. In 2014 the scandal-plagued agency tried to persuade Congress to approve an $83 million increase to its already excessive $7.2 billion annual budget.

This disgraceful government pornography epidemic might once and for all come under control thanks to a law (Eliminating Pornography from Agencies Act) introduced recently by a North Carolina Congressman, Mark Meadows. The measure would stop federal employees from accessing, watching or sharing pornography on government-issued computers and devices.  How pathetic that this problem has been so pervasive in our taxpayer-funded agencies that a law must be passed to stop it. Why can’t these agencies police themselves and put an end to this shameful issue?

Congressman Meadows says in a statement that the inspiration for the bill came from yet another agency embroiled in a porn scandal, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Recent EPA Inspector General reports have uncovered multiple cases of employees working hard at watching porn. “One EPA employee was viewing as much as 6 hours of pornography a day in his office,” Meadows said. “The same federal employee was found to have downloaded as many as 7,000 pornographic files onto his government computer.” Another inspector general report, provided by the congressman on his website, details an employee who pleaded guilty to using his EPA email account to access an internet site with child pornography.

The congressman, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations, says most agencies have rules banning porn yet it continues to take place. “There is absolutely no excuse for federal employees to be viewing and downloading pornographic materials on the taxpayers’ dime,” he said, adding that “it’s appalling that it requires an act of Congress to ensure that federal agencies block access to these sites.” Seldom mentioned is the cybersecurity threat created by accessing porn websites because the files are often ridden with viruses and malware, the congressman further points out.