Nearly 100 federal employees spanning 12 federal agencies confessed to watching pornography at work, according to a new investigatvie report by Washington’s News4 I-Team.
The amount of time some staffers spent watching illicit videos was staggering.
At the Environmental Protection Agency, one staffer “acknowledged watching porn for up to six hours a day for ‘several years,’” the article said.
It continued:
At the Department of Commerce, internal investigators found a patent and trademark employee made 1,800 connections to pornographic websites. According to memos released by the agency’s inspector general’s office, the employee told investigators, “When I am working hard, I go to these images to take a mental break.”
An employee at the D.C. headquarters of the Federal Railroad Administration searched for porn for 252 hours in one year, the equivalent of 10 full work days according to memos from the agency’s inspector general.
While the creepy behavior would get an employee fired in the private sector, government workers caught watching porn on the clock often keep their jobs. Several agencies told News4’s I-Team that penalties can be as insubstantial as a written reprimand.