rssSEC Employees Viewed Porn While Rome (and Wall Street) Burned
Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 3:03 pm
- 17 Comments
Well, we knew that SEC employees weren’t policing the Lehman Brothers or sharing information on its collapse with the Fed and they weren’t getting Goldman to disclose how much money Tim Geithner got AIG to pay them from the U.S. Treasury in a timely fashion, and they certainly weren’t issuing rules to allow them to enforce the 2003 settlement with investment banks over deliberately skewed market analysis. But today, we finally know what SEC employees were doing for the last couple of years. They were viewing pornography.
According to John Cook at Gawker:
Now we’ve obtained reports of 16 investigations into porn-surfing by SEC employees and contractors (one of them is a woman!), including one man who said his daily porn viewing at work was limited to “no longer than an hour and a half a day.”
And that’s only 16 of the two dozen caught over the last two years.
Firewalls designed to keep employees from accessing porn didn’t stop them, according to an earlier Washington Times story.
The work computer of one regional supervisor for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission showed more than 1,800 attempts to look up pornography in a 17-day span: “It was kind of distraction per se,” he later told investigators.
Outside of the efforts to look at those 1,800 pages, the man still managed to “look at” actual pornography at least twice a day, he reportedly told investigators. Other employees reported using their computers to look at pornography multiple hours a day, or even a few times a week.
Sites accessed by SEC employees included everything from AdultFriendFinder.com (a dating site dedicated exclusively to sexual encounters) to Megarotic and YouPorn (well-known video porn sites often dedicated to amateur exhibitionists) to fetish sites catering to a variety of distinct interests. One staffer used loopholes in the content filter to download child porn, and his case was referred to the FBI for investigation. Otherwise, employees were reprimanded and sent back to their desks and their computers.
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Comment posted March 23, 2010 @ 10:21 pm
“The work computer of one regional supervisor for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission showed more than 1,800 attempts to look up pornography in a 17-day span: “It was kind of distraction per se,” he later told investigators.”
Oh be realistic. 1,800 failed attempts to look at porn? In 17 days? Who would bother to look at over 100 blocked pages, EVERY DAY FOR 17 DAYS?
Most likely those were pages opened automatically by other web pages he opened, or by a virus or other malware.
You're a noob at this internet thing, aren't you?
Pingback posted March 24, 2010 @ 1:30 pm
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Comment posted December 22, 2010 @ 9:04 pm
I agree with Jon H. This doesn’t sound realistic at all.
Comment posted September 6, 2011 @ 6:20 am
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Comment posted September 6, 2011 @ 8:37 am
Just leaving a quick comment to say I’m enjoying your blog…
Comment posted September 6, 2011 @ 8:55 am
Very inspiring, nice to know others are also interested in these things!
Comment posted September 6, 2011 @ 10:33 am
Just leaving a quick comment to say I’m enjoying your blog…
Comment posted September 6, 2011 @ 10:47 pm
Thanks for sharing, this was interesting to read and very helpful.
Comment posted September 6, 2011 @ 10:50 pm
I like your blog a lot, I just bookmarked it — thanks and keep it up.
Comment posted September 7, 2011 @ 2:54 am
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Comment posted September 7, 2011 @ 2:57 am
Just leaving a quick comment to say I’m enjoying your blog…
Comment posted September 7, 2011 @ 7:16 am
This was interesting and helpful, thanks for sharing.
Comment posted September 7, 2011 @ 12:16 pm
Interesting stuff, I’ve bookmarked your site and hope to come back.
Comment posted September 7, 2011 @ 12:19 pm
Just leaving a quick comment to say I’m enjoying your blog…
Comment posted September 7, 2011 @ 12:25 pm
Thanks for sharing, this was interesting to read and very helpful.
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