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Economy Tanked While Government Surfed Porn
unixan writes "In a report by the SEC Inspector General that smacks of fiddling while Rome burns, 33 recent ethics investigations all showed that the government employees responsible for keeping an eye on the economy were instead obsessed with surfing porn — while the economy was tipping over. One cited example: 'A senior attorney at the SEC's Washington headquarters spent up to eight hours a day looking at and downloading pornography. When he ran out of hard drive space, he burned the files to CDs or DVDs, which he kept in boxes around his office.'"
Any non-work internet activity is risking ones job.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Some of us do both. /. and porn that is.
Wow, talk about bureaucracy. There's no way I would have gotten away with downloading that much on a work connection, even if it was Linux ISOs or legal, harmless data. How did these guys get away with it for so long? Let's say this guy had a 500 GB hard drive...then stacks of DVDs at 4.7 GB each...that's a lot of smut a day. My network admins would have been knocking on my office door. Once they found out what it was, I'd never find a job again.
Something tells me the network admins for that government department must have been doing the same thing, or were incompetent, or playing WoW (or maybe some hellish combination).
As of 2007, the SEC employed 3798 people. They found 33 cases of apparently habitual porn surfing (I get the impression a single visit didn't count, but visiting a few times a week would get noticed). Is it actually news that ~1% of *any* organization consisting primarily of office workers with internet connections would surf for porn? Finding 1% of any given population with no damn common sense or self control is trivial. I'm not sure how it's any different because the SEC numbers are known.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Yep - watching people screwing, while the people they are supposed to be watching are screwing the public. Which makes the SEC like the glory hole in Wall Street.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
These poor bastards are going to be burned at the afraid-of-sexuality stake, instead of the do-your-damn-job-instead-of-goofing-off stake. They deserve to be fired like any other idiot who goofs off, but I'm sure they're going to be charged with sex crimes of some sort.
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
Would the economy be OK now? Just asking.....
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I'm sure IT was well aware of the situation by the time the hard drive was full.
Who watches the watchers? Ceiling cat does.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
As far as anyone can tell, not one of these people were fired for both not doing their job and for using work equipment in a HIGHLY non-work related manner.
Then again, we have the same thing around here. We know for a fact and have documented at least two people repeatedly, for over half an hour each day for months on end, trying to access porn and porn-related sites. Yet, like the SEC, none have been canned.
To use a tired comment, there used to be a time when one could work hard, get recognized and advance ones career through such work. No longer. Apparently failure is the new success.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
like a troll.
A) DO you think people watch the economy by looking out a window? no. It's worded like the think the economy is in a box and people are just watching in case it finds a way out.
B) They have no way of knowing what's going on in every board room in the financial industry
c) IT's a large organization, of course some people where surfing porn. People are people.
D) None of this excuse what they did. I'm only pointing out that just because it's "the government" doesn't mean the people running it aren't people.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Kind of like reading /. at work?
"What is there a tank on the boat? WHY IS THERE A TANK ON THE BOAT?!?" L4D2
If this is that big a deal, I hope nobody finds out I've actually been having sex while the economy tanks.
Especially my wife.
Just a quick reminder to anyone thinking of condeming these people here on Slashdot - are you at work right now, reading Slashdot? Is that what you're paid for? The article reeks of sensationalism just because these people happened to be viewing porn instead of reading news, flicking through a book, watching YouTube, or a thousand and one other things that people do every day at work instead of actually working.
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
I'm glad I don't work where you do.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
... is that they wanted to diddle while rome burned?
the SEC is the host of our Strategic Porn Reserves. Then you'll thank that attorney's forward-thinking approach to preserving a domestic supply to reduce our vulnerability to the whims of foreign porn suppliers.
The SEC's job was to go after fraud and general theft; they didn't do their job. The fact that a lot of them were caught surfing for pron isn't the point; the point is that they were not doing their jobs and the consequences were for the most part, felt by other people.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Unless you consider and can justify reading /. as part of your job (keeping abreast on technology news)...
"Economy Tanked while the Government Wanked."
~Sticky
//No Karma, cause I stoled it.
You'd be surprised at what people get away with in corporations. This really isn't that surprising. People are just like 'ZOMG its gov't failure' instead of 'ZOMG it people failure'. I bet many large companies would have similar statistics (sadly).
FTFA:
Anyone want to bet that certain right-wing news outlets are furiously trying to figure out a way to blame this on President Obama?
A certain right wing news outlet? How about Slashdot? Where in the summary does it mention that this happened under Bush? Nowhere, it says 'recent.' This is meant to spread FUD about the SEC, in order to turn people against the idea of financial reform and regulation. "Why, if these fools are constantly surfing porn, how can we trust them to regulate Wall Street?" But they aren't anymore: the fellow appointed by this administration cracked down and stopped it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I guarantee you that any competant IT department would not only be fully aware of what was going on, but also smart enough not to stir a pot that big.
If I came in tomorrow and the entire sales team was found to be mass downloading pron, what could we do? Get the entire team fired? Who is going to pick up the slack from that? Can't just replace people just like that. We could filter their content, but how long before that becomes a headache when they can't reach legit sites. We can throttle them but then there are complaints that they can't get any work done while they are chewing through bandwidth on a bit-torrent.
IT's job is to make sure that everyone is up and running. Its the managers job to make sure that people are doing their work. When people start treating IT like a police force, then something is seriously wrong, and you need to look at the power structure and layout of your company. We can be eyes and ears, we can inform managers, but its definately NOT our job to go and get people fired.
Boy, they sure took the Bush agenda seriously.
--
Toro
keeping abreast on technology news
I see what you did there...
Sheila Bair hasn't enforced the (non-discretionary) Prompt Corrective Action law on any of the largest TBTF banks.
Henry Paulson lobbied for the repeal of the last vestiges of Glass-Steagall while he worked for Goldman Sachs and then committed extortion by threatening Congress with martial law unless they handed over $700 billion to a group of unapprehended felons.
The FBI warned about about an epidemic of mortgage fraud back in 2004 yet the last two administrations have not indicted a single major player in the industry.
But by all means, ignore them and pay attention to the small fry browsing porn.
DEATH TO THE INFIDEL!!!!
Kind of like reading /. at work?
I work for a government agency, and we're allowed to use the internet for non-work purposes. In fact, Slashdot was specifically mentioned as an acceptable site to visit on our government-owned computers. The general guidelines are:
-Don't visit porn sites (an automatic firing offense, unless it was truly inadvertent)
-Don't do anything for personal profit (checking an eBay auction is okay, running an eBay-based business isn't)
-Don't behave unprofessionally
-Don't use excessive bandwidth
-Don't spend too much time online for non-work reasons (i.e. get your work done)
I personally warned the rest of the company about the McAfee problem earlier this week because I was goofing off on Slashdot.
Saved countless hours of problems.
Besides, the IT department just wants the good porn to go into the shared collection and for the job to be done. If I am waiting for a long-ass process to happen and would otherwise be left picking my nose or jabbering at someone who is trying to work, a bit of down time with a browser is not a big deal.
Interesting that this years-old story rears up now, when the SEC is suing Goldman and the administration is pushing financial industry reform.
Sounds like there certainly was (is?) a porn problem at SEC. Convenient that is was such a non-story, until needed.
What a surprisingly reasonable policy.
Wrong. Good government helps people. It's why we have government. It protects the weak from the strong. If we have bad government, that is not the fault of government, but of We, The People.
As for your ludicrously misinformed points:
Obama has agreed to pull out by 2011. The military says that his plan to pull 45,000 troops out by August is on track.
As for Bagram, I bet you used to use "When will we close Guantanamo?" until we, uh, closed it. Sure, this is a problem, but Obama's record is good in this regard: he will not allow the US to torture prisoners.
The Fed is NOT still handing out free money to Banks. That was Bush's idea, remember? Obama continued it for a while, but now that his policies have gotten the economy into recovery mode, not only is he not handing out more cash, not only did he make AIG execs give back their bonuses, his SEC is suing the bastards.
Spending isn't skyrocketing. I don't know where you even get that. Remember, this is a depression we are in. As FDR proved, we need to spend to get out of it. But skyrocketing? LOL. That's what Republicans do. Look at the surplus over the years, Dems build up a surplus and cut spending, Republicans borrow and spend more, on more ridiculous things. At least Dems spend the money on useful things.
So, the premise that 'they are all the same' is totally false. I don't like Obama because he is a centrist and not the socialist some people claim he is. I wish! But no, he's another Bill Clinton.
Politicians on both sides may have faults. The Dems aren't perfect. But the Republicans are orders of magnitude more evil, selfish, and dishonest.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton