White House Battles Employee Porn

[William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20000810/aponline193125_000.htm

By Deb Riechmann
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, Aug. 10, 2000; 7:31 p.m. EDT

WASHINGTON When White House officials punished a handful of employees
a year ago for downloading pornographic material from the Internet,
they thought they had snuffed out the problem. It has resurfaced.

"There was a recent uptick in incidents of this in the last month or
so," White House spokesman Jake Siewert said Thursday. "We're not
certain who did it, but we're starting to sort it out and those people
will be punished too."

The Internet news site WorldNetDaily, which first reported the story
Wednesday, said a consultant hired last year to improve security in
the White House's computer network uncovered "massive pornographic
video files passing through the system's Internet firewall," which
protects the system against hackers. WorldNetDaily said the
unidentified computer consultant from California alerted officials to
the cyber-porn problem in February 1999.

"A handful of White House employees were reprimanded and one was
suspended without pay a year ago for downloading pornographic material
from the Internet," Siewert said, insisting that the problem was not
"massive" as WorldNetDaily reported, but amounted to "isolated
incidents."

He declined to provide details or say how many employees were
involved. In response to the problem, the White House enhanced filters
used to block access to inappropriate sites.

"This is clearly against White House policy," Siewert said. "Every
time you turn on a computer you're told to use the Internet
specifically for official government business only."


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