Friday, April 23, 2010

The SEC: Surfing Porn While Rome Burns

An inspector general has submitted a report to Congress highlighting senior staffers at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) surfing their work computers for porn while the economy and financial markets were crashing all around them.

They even got so desperate ingenious as to figure out ways (by using Google images, for instance) around the computer's firewall designed to block pornographic material.

The inspector conducted 33 probes of individuals, 16 of whom were senior staff earning as much as $222,418 a year.

A senior attorney, who agreed to resign when confronted, often spent eight hours downloading porn. Once his hard drive was full, he burned the material to DVDs and CDs.

An accountant who used Google images amassed a huge collection of porn on his hard drive despite the firewall. When discovered, he was slapped on the wrist and given a 14-day suspension (with pay? I wonder).

Interestingly, the number of violators grew from two to 16 from 2007 to mid-2008, just as the financial markets were collapsing.

At least the SEC wasn't asleep at the wheel. Instead, its staff was distracted by more pleasurable pursuits than cracking down on fraud.

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