The rhetorical questions been asked countless times: What were government officials doing while the economy collapsed a couple years ago? Turns out, some of them were busy visiting inappropriate Web sites.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is currently investigating several senior staffers who allegedly spent hours watching porn at their desks.
In a recent report, the agency’s inspector general, David Kotz, cited 31 investigations of employees who violated SEC rules by using their work computers to view sexually explicit images.
The probes cover a more than two-year period dating back to 2007, ComputerWorld reports.
The investigations include some of employees who spent several hours a day viewing porn — and one enforcement attorney who filled all the available space on his work computer with pornographic images.
How did so much inappropriate computer use take place? It wasn’t because IT didn’t try to stop it. Apparently, the SEC had Web filters in place, but the employees used a variety of means to get around them.