Missile Defense Workers Watching Porn On The Job

Watching pornography on the job using company computers is always a bad and stupid idea, but it is even worse when you are supposed to be protecting America at the time–and on the taxpayer’s dime.

The Missile Defense Agency is part of the Pentagon that has the important role of defending the U.S. against the incoming ballistic missile threat. But apparently some of the employees and contractors there had another kind of lift-off on their minds. ABC News quips that the rocket men were “watching the wrong bombshells” on federal government computers.

The executive director has issued a memo ordering Missile Defense Agency staff to stop surfing Internet pornography while on duty according to the Bloomberg news agency.

John James Jr. warned Missile Defense Agency employees that some of them were caught “engaging in inappropriate use of the MDA network…Specifically, there have been instances of employees and contractors accessing websites, or transmitting messages, containing pornographic or sexually explicit images.”

The memo warns the offenders that they could lose their security clearance or even get fired, which is pretty rare when it comes to government employment.

In addition to the issue of goofing off, the triple XXX websites can introduce malware into a network. Much more concerning, it could allow spies to access sensitive military information related to national security. Bloomberg explains:

A government cybersecurity specialist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because such work is classified, said that many pornographic websites are infected and criminals and foreign intelligence services such as Russia use them to gain access to and harvest data from government and corporate computer networks.

The MDA claims its sophisticated, secure network was not comprised and that only a relatively few employees were involved in surfing porn on the job.

In 2010, senior officials at the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission–the agency that is supposed to nab Wall Street crooks–spent hours and hours on SEC computers looking at porn instead of reviewing corporate balance sheets. It’s unclear if any of them were even disciplined.

With stories like this, and many others such as the General Services Administration money-wasting scandal and the $14 billion overpayment in unemployment compensation, is it any wonder that the ordinary American simply asks “why?” when Democrats and liberals obsess about raising taxes?