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US Missile Defense Staff Told To Stop Watching Porn
An anonymous reader writes "John James Jr., director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, who is responsible for the nation's missile defense system, recently sent out a one-page memo warning employees and contractors to stop using agency computers to visit pornographic Web sites. That's right; apparently they were watching the wrong type of bombshells."
Why is this considered news?
make love not war baby!
Really? Did this just get through because of the 12 year old level humour at the end?
Where the fuck is the news for nerds? No one gives a shit about office memos about not watching porn.
Fuck.
They are the real boobs here!
they have a missile... in their pants
...this means our missile defense has been shooting blanks this whole time?
It because a problem when some of the computers started getting viruses and trojans from the porn sites.
That's what the first article says. The second article says that wasn't the reason. I guess this is why it's a waste to read the articles.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Not that this is really news worthy but who cares if they are watching porn? This is a legitimate job that has to be staffed 24/7 and probably requires about 20min worth of total combined labor in a typical year. Being the military that is increased to maybe a few days labor worth of redundant checklists over the course of the year.
OK this idiots do not know that all those sites are loaded with malware?
OH well boys will be boys.
Johnson: [notices Dr. Evil's spaceship on radar] Colonel, you better take a look at this radar.
Colonel: What is it, son?
Johnson: I don't know, sir, but it looks like a giant--
[cut to the sky in two jets]
Jet Pilot: Dick!
Dick: Yeah?
Pilot: Take a look outta starboard.
Dick: Oh, my God! It looks like a huge--
[cut to a forest with 2 birdwatchers]
Bird-Watching Woman: Pecker!
Bird-Watching Man: [raises his binoculars] Oh, where?
Bird-Watching Woman: Wait! that's not a woodpecker. It looks like someone's--
[cut to a boot camp]
Army Sergeant: PRIVATES! We have reports of an unidentified flying object! It is a long, smooth shaft, complete with--
[cut to a baseball game]
Umpire: 2 balls! [looks up from game] What is that? That looks just like an enormous--
[cut to a Chinese school]
Teacher: Wang! Pay attention!
Wang: I was distracted by that enormous flying--
[cut to a concert with Willie Nelson and another guitarist]
Musician: Willie.
Willie: Yeah?
Musician: What's that?
Willie: [looks up] Well, it looks like a giant--
[cut back to headquarters]
Colonel: Johnson!
Johnson: Yes, sir!
Colonel: Get on the horn to British Intelligence and let them know about this!
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17lkdqoLt44
Silence is a state of mime.
It sure is a good thing viruses and malware doesn't come from porn web sites, and also that enemies of the state don't read slashdot. Whew, I feel safer already!!!
Is not what they should be seeking.
Make love not War....pass the hand cream
either way they are still watching missiles :/
"That's right...I said it."
Keep in mind that the folks we ask to stay on that bleeding edge of offense stay in a hole in the ground for 48 hours straight without any access to the world around them besides those systems. Perhaps the director would be willing to see if MWR can chip in some assets? After all, unofficial business is what MWR is for.
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
The US Missile Defense agency doesn't have any sort of content filter that could block this type of thing? You'd think they could use a simple whitelisting system - there can't be that many sites outside of *.gov that Missile Defense workers legitmately need to access from work. Let them use a smart phone in the lunchroom (outside of secure areas) when they need to update Facebook (or browse porn).
Read that actual article lol. "MDA has more than 8,000 employees, and less than a half-dozen were found to have accessed restricted sites or downloaded inappropriate materials" Not that bad a record IMO, 5 or fewer out of 8,000 employees.
Big Brother watching you XD
The article says that less than half a dozen individuals were found to be accessing inappropriate material. That's out of over 8,000 individuals who work at MDA - one memo was sent out to address the problem.
This is not news.
From article: U.S. missile defense workers have been warned that porn on the job is not allowed. It's not just a question of public security due to distraction, but there's also the risk of computer security due to malware found on many such sites.
So they're running Windows machines. Check. Thanks for the information. :>
It's not really porn they're watching -- it's terrorist missives encrypted in image files.
The military wants an image of a disciplined group of people focused on their job.
Reality the bulk is a bunch of young adults in their sexual prime...
What do you think will happen?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
And obliterated Manhattan when the 20 Megaton ICBM hit New York City.
HRH The Duke of Windsor
NOOOooo...
...so from now on, bring you own porn to work in the form of a magazine.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Can't believe no-one picked up on that one!
Not just for blocking porn, but malware.
An easy mistake to make
SEC staff were found doing the same thing. Lawyers – senior level people – pulling down 220k+/year were amassing porn archives. Madoff was still a market maker running an options exchange while this was going on.
More recently the IT managers in Los Angeles have had to tell city 'workers' to stop streaming the Olympics due to network congestion.
...the safer I feel.
replace the men in the missile silos with computer control so we don't have to deal with this.
Clearly they are just studying new shaft designs for missiles. We are always turning to nature to inspire us. Maybe we need to lube the rockets before we penetrate mother earth's atmosphere. You would never get such an idea without porn. Science.
Polluting our precious bodily fluids... commie preverts!
Brig. General Jack D Ripper
843rd Bomb Wing
Burpelson Air Force Base
See the following documentary on why this is a bad idea:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/
It documents an early attempt to remove the humans from the loop, and some of the problems encountered.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Adult pornography is not generally illegal, true, but unless you actually work in the industry it probably is not appropriate for the office.
Fairly, however, an employee should be instructed as to what is and is not appropriate for work before they can be disciplined for violating it. I remember being presented with an internet use policy when I was hired, as well as sexual harassment training. So it you are told in advance not to do certain things at work, and you freely agree not to do them, you can then be disciplined for doing said actions.
Otherwise one could argue the old "No one told me porn at work was not allowed!" a la George Costanza.
"I'm a humble person really,
I'm actually much greater than I think I am"
OK, so doing this on military time isn't justified...you sign away a lot of rights when you join the military. But -- can you imagine how awful this job must be? If you really are stuck in a hole in the ground in rural South Dakota for days at a time, and don't do anything other than wait for an order to launch a missile...that's BAD. What do these people do for entertainment?
Seriously, joining the Air Force and getting assigned this duty must be the worst punishment. Even if you're cleaning toilets or being a security guard, you at least have the opportunity to interact with other humans. Here, you're completely isolated and waiting for an order that will most likely never come. The last time there was ever a conceivable situation where we would need to launch an ICBM was the late 80s, and the last time we ever came close to doing anything was the early 60s. Knowing that, wow, what an awful straw to draw getting that duty.
They have a very restrictive proxy. If it were some regular employees, the proxy would have been updated and they would have been dealt with, The only reason I can see something like this going down is if some of the small number of privileged execs that were bypassing the proxy were doing the porn surfing.
I'd like to play global thermonuclear war, Joshua....
We shouldn't be so uptight, it's not like everyone in the world will die if they're distracted from their job for an instant.
Probably using Windows too. I'm surprised those nukes don't take off by themselves on the spot.
They were watching massive ordnance penetrators attacking and blowing their payloads in various soft targets :D
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Classified systems have their own networks (SIPRNet is a good example). They also usually have some sort of secondary access to the internet, although you really don't want to surf to any websites unless you have a business reason for going there (You never know when you're going to need a jpeg of Voltron for an office presentation, after all).
At the same time, most of these workstations have an un-class (short for unclassified) machine, and often it's accessible through a KVM. Although I wouldn't recommend hitting a porn site or anything else that's dodgy, this is where you would want to do your personal web browsing, like feeding your Twitter Cows or updating your MySpace Wall, etc.
The point is that, if our friends over at the Federal embodiment of Phallic Symbolism Bureau were sitting in SCIFs surfing porn on high-power (classified) machines, they are not only stupid, they are *incredibly* stupid.
Mouse too.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
"pocket rocket."
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
there's actually a serious reason why they shouldn't permit internet-porn-watching in U.S. classified military networks. if they really really want to watch porn, they should provide *isolated* computers and DVDs - or the personnel should bring their own personal machines into the building (if permitted).
criminals *know* that lots of people watch porn, so they make sure that such sites are loaded with viruses. even just knowing, now, that U.S. military watch porn, you can be damn sure that there will be foreign intelligence agencies who will now increase the number and severity of the viruses and trojans. this is even used as the plot in at least one sci-fi film i've seen, for goodness sake!
Film at 11
That is a f'd up tune! Wtf http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3024769&cid=40872229
If these guys are watching porn, then they're not starting WWIII. Given the choice, I would prefer that my tax dollars went toward their watching porn.
I work for the DoD. You would not believe how tightly the lock down their computer. I cannot access google calendar, or any blog, or a lot of training sites. Getting to porn site would be practically impossible. I don't even work with missals, I work with personnel records.
BTW: accessing porn has always been unauthorized on DoD systems.
So, if the actresses they are watching are all from foreign countries around the world, do you think they will want to launch a missile to kill them? I've seen hundreds or thousands of Russians, Chinese, and middle eastern chicks. Why would I want to kill them and their families?
Another example of the world would be a better place with more porn and fewer weapons.
I don't know how the missles are manned today, but they used to be underground in the middle of nowhere under many, mant tons of reenforced concrete. No cell signals.
I think they worked 3-5 day shifts.
After their testing is all performed daily and the place is cleaned, there isn't much they can do - jobwise. Their job is to be in that underground silo and at the ready should a command to fire come in. They are tested with firing commands all the time. The crews can't tell the difference between another test and the real thing.
There's only so much reading and studying that a man can do with their finger on missles that can kill 100M people. They need to relax. No wives or girlfriends are allowed down there, so .... other stimulation is needed. For the generation today, magazines aren't stimulating enough. Porn is the answer and honestly, I don't have any issue with it, provided their other daily tasks are completed in a satisfactory manner.
BTW, my father was a missleman ... many years ago.
OTOH, I have doubts that men are still manning those silos. A remote control would be easier, unless the systems required on-site daily maintenance.
Then prosecute them under sexual harassment law. As managers share legal liability with a company if they knowingly permit such a situation (such as participating in it). They can keep their jobs (government employees are almost impossible to fire), let people take them to civil court until they've had enough.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I'm going to assume they have their critical workstations airgapped and these are their email/other workstations where they can access situational awareness information.
Simple way to resolve this is to allow access to whitelist-only pre-approved sites. We do this in our SCADA control room. SCADA machines are airgapped, and email/documentation machines are white-list only.
We do give them access to Terminal Servers in a DMZ which have less-restricted Internet access.
Also, we allow them to bring in their own personal devices that are never connected to our networks. It's pretty boring at 3am on a 12-hour shift.
Why places with devices like that even have internet connection, let alone browsers?
Dropping a payload behind enemy lines.
My only concern is the defense force going blind.
Sticky situation
I certainly only hope the porn is being watched on separate networks over separate non-military zoned connections over non-military use computers. Obviously they don't use windows or they would have a badly infected computer in a matter of a few minutes. It's scary that computers related to the function of controlling our nuclear weapons are being used to watch porn while our enemies might be using it to compromise those systems. Oh look there goes the IBM's now did I hit the wrong button or did someone else?
Either that or this article is just about generating traffic and gathering good jokes and they really arn't watching porn on these machines...we can only hope!
All cellphones, laptops, and electronics should be confiscated at the front door and the whole place needs to be meshed in such a way that you cannot use anything other than physical communication devices between staff. I didn't RTFA but I presume that people with this kind of power should not be around the internet. I just feel like a hacker could just infiltrate or listen from a microphone on a cell or laptop on confidential information. I certainly feel safe with these guys at the helm.
Article didn't say.
Didn't click TFL (the fucking links). These were certainly the Wikipedia entries about goatse.
So your browser does not tell you what the links are before you click them? Either you're using a lousy browser, or you're incompetent at using a decent browser, or you're a trollish coward as well as an anonymous one.
For your edification, the links were to the Wikipedia articles on (i) the vulva, and (ii) the glans penis.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire