Nero fiddled as Rome burned; SEC staffers watched porn as the economy crashed.
A new report from the agency’s inspector general revealed a startling proclivity for sexually graphic materials among certain SEC staffers.
The SEC’s inspector general conducted 33 “probes” — yes, that’s the word the Associated Press chose to use, and yes, I am twelve years old — of SEC officials, including 17 “at a senior level.”
One senior attorney spent up to eight hours a day viewing and downloading pornography on the job, burning files to CDs and DVDs that he kept around his office. An accountant was blocked more than 16,000 times in a month from visiting illicit websites, yet still built a collection of “very graphic” material by using Google Images to get around the SEC’s internal filter.
AP quotes Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, as saying it is “disturbing that high-ranking officials within the SEC were spending more time looking at porn than taking action to help stave off the events that put our nation’s economy on the brink of collapse.”
OK, but if they were spending their time watching reruns of “Jersey Shore” or something, is this such a big story? And which is more unhealthy? Discuss in the comments.
Oh, by the way, Nero committed suicide in A.D. 68, under siege by critics of his tax policies. Just saying.
2 Comments
To me, this highlights the prevalence of compulsive porn viewing/collecting occurring in any internet-enabled workplace. The SEC just has a prominent media profile, and its porn-ogling staff make perfect scapegoats for the massive financial crisis.
Apparently, the SEC investigation identified less than 1% of the SEC’s 3,500 employees as work-time porn dabblers. As organisations embrace social media and traditional internet blocks are lifted, this statistic is relatively low.
Hey, only 1% of Federal workers spend their days watching porn on the taxpayer’s dime. Not too bad! Assuming 2.7 Million Federal employees at 1% at an average salary of $70K, and let’s say they’re only surfing the net 50% of their day, that works out about $1Billion a year. A drop in the ocean. At least the “stimulus” bill seems to be working!