the impact of porn on business: legal liabilities

Have you ever wondered how other employees are impacted at your business by an employee consuming porn?  It often creates a hostile work environment and if unaddressed, may lead to a sexual harassment lawsuit. 

Most often, we read about this trend in the case of librarians.  Many libraries have mandated federal filters that are attached to federal funds, but it is still easy to pull up pornography from a direct link.  Who is left to enforce the library policy for appropriate computer usage?  The librarians.    

Just this week, a librarian in Birmingham, Ala., filed a lawsuit against her employer, the library, for a computer usage policy that allows a sexually hostile work environment.  She also alleges that she has been sexually harassed by library patrons who have made sexually aggressive comments and who have sexually touched her.

Libraries have been grappling with this issue for almost a decade.  In 2003, a group of 12 library employees at the Minneapolis Public Library filed a complaint with the EEOC claiming that “During the recent course of my employment I have been subjected to repeated exposure to sexually explicit materials and sexual activity at my place of employment.  My employer has adopted an Internet access policy which allows for unrestricted access to sexually explicit Internet sites.”  After an EEOC ruling that the library’s conditions created a hostile work environment, the employees filed a 31-page complaint in federal court detailing the allegations.  The outcome of the case was a $435,000 settlement paid to the plantiffs.   

Dial Corporation is private sector example of the costly impact of pornography and sexual harassment on business.  In 2007, Dial Corp. agreed to pay $10 million to settle class action sexual harassment allegations brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.  The EEOC’s suit clamied widespread lewd remarks, physical assaults, displays of pornography and other acts of harassment and intimidation of femail employees.  The Employment Law Alliance said: “This case demonstrates the high financial and other consequences of management tolerance of sexually inappropriate activities at even one facility.”

The impact of porn on business that includes a legal liability can be calculated; $435,000 for Minnesota Public Libraries (plus legal fees) and $10 million for the Dial Corp. (plus legal fees).  Tomorrow, we’ll look at another intangible cost of pornography – lost opportunities.

the impact of porn on business: disruptive work environments

In addition to the tangible costs associated with keeping pornography out of your work place, there are intangible costs to consider. If your company has had to take action to terminate an employee because of their misuse of company computer policy by consuming porn on the job, then your company will feel the void from the fired employee. Others on the team will have to pick up the slack until someone new is hired and trained. There is also the possibility of a computer slow-down as work is performed to keep your system clean and running smoothly while it combats extra spam eamil and possible virus that have been into your network.

sec and pornography – how it impacts you

Last week the Securities and Exchange Commission released a report on its investigation that has set off a buzz across the nation.  In a federal agency which bears the responsibility of oversight on the country’s financial institutions, more than 30 employees, more than half of which were paid salaries between $100,000 and $225,000, were viewing porn on the taxpayers’ dime.   Here’s a sampling of the news reports:

ABCNews.com – How Big is the SEC’s Porn Problem?   “So what was the Securities and Exchange Commission doing while the economy fell to pieces?”

ABCNews.com – SEC Pornography Problem: Employees Spent Hours Surfing Porn Sites  “These guys in the middle of a financial crisis are spending their time looking at prurient material on the Internet,” said Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland and former director of the Office of Economics at the U.S. International Trade Commission.  “It’s reckless, and indicates a contempt for the taxpayer and the taxpayer’s interest in monitoring financial markets,” Morici said.

ABCNews.com – SEC and Pornography: Workers Spent Hours on Porn Sites Instead of Stopping Fraud  The Securities and Exchange Commission is supposed to be the sheriff of the financial industry, looking for financial crimes like Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. But the new report, obtained by ABC News, says senior employees of the SEC spent hours on the commission’s computers looking at (porn).

The Washington Times – SEC porn peekers at work confess  “I think it was just arrogance and ignorance on my part,” one worker said. “You know, I mean … I didn’t intend to hurt anybody.

CNN – Report: SEC staffers watched porn as economy crashed As the country was sinking into its worst financial crisis in more than 70 years, Security and Exchange Commission employees and contractors cruised porn sites and viewed sexually explicit pictures using government computers, according to an agency report obtained by CNN.

MSNBC.com – SEC employees surfed porn as economy fell One senior attorney spent up to 8 hours a day downloading porn. 

Concerned Women of America – Getting paid by taxpayers to watch porn  While the United Stated was spiraling into a recession, high-ranking government employees were really enjoying their work—they got to watch pornography all day on their work computers at the expense of American taxpayers. Now all of those other scandals regarding lack of oversight and enforcement at the SEC make a lot more sense. 

Pornography isn’t private – its negative impact is felt by families, communities and our nation. 

stealing time to do the crime

Dr. Walter Jones III is a friend of ROCK’s and has several years experience of working on issues that impact families and communities.  Today he writes about the impact of  viewing pornography at the workplace.  Please join us in welcoming him to the ROCK blog!

The Internet’s provision of quick-click gratification has now facilitated pornography consumption to become not only unlimited, but unrestrained as well. According to Craig Gross, quoted at InternetSafety.com, “Everyone with access to the Internet is either targeted, tempted or in the trenches regarding Internet porn.” Gross is the founder of XXXChurch, part of a growing network of addiction ministries.

In the 2009 movie “Fireproof,” actor Kirk Cameron plays Caleb Holt—a husband and firefighter—whose marriage is headed for divorce because of a multitude of marital stressors, one of which is his addiction to Internet pornography. In the film, Holt’s lust is indulged in broad daylight and on open display before his wife as she passes him staring at his computer monitor—in their dining room—with the monitor unashamedly positioned for public viewing.

Today porn consumption is no longer carefully and clandestinely confined to the world of dark shadows and private, personal use. It has crossed an even more disturbing line: from the home into the workplace.

On a recent Fox News report of an incident in Australia, a man being interviewed on television stands several feet in front of a work colleague (who had his back to the interviewing camera—but whose computer monitor was facing the camera). The colleague, it turned out, was viewing photos of scantily clad women on his computer. After several moments, he turned around in utter mortification that he and his salacious surfing had been captured on live video for all to see!

Back in the United States, two recent reports by The Washington Times revealed widespread workplace viewing of Internet pornography by employees at the National Science Foundation (NSF)—a taxpayer-funded federal agency—and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Concerning NSF, the Times reports:

[O]ne senior executive spent at least 331 days looking at pornography on his government computer and chatting online with nude or partially clad women without being detected, the records show.

When finally caught, the NSF official retired. He even offered, among other explanations, a humanitarian defense, suggesting that he frequented the porn sites to provide a living to the poor overseas women. Investigators put the cost to taxpayers of the senior official’s porn surfing at between $13,800 and about $58,000.

‘He explained that these young women are from poor countries and need to make money to help their parents and this site helps them do that,’ investigators wrote in a memo.

Another employee in a different case was caught with hundreds of pictures, videos and even PowerPoint slide shows containing pornography. Asked by an investigator whether he had completed any government work on a day when a significant amount of pornography was downloaded, the employee responded, ‘Um, I can’t remember,’ according to records.

The problems at the [NSF] were so pervasive they swamped the agency’s inspector general and forced the internal watchdog to cut back on its primary mission of investigating grant fraud and recovering misspent tax dollars.

Similarly, concerning employees at the SEC:
The work computer of one regional supervisor…showed more than 1,800 attempts to look up pornography in a 17-day span: ‘It was kind of distraction per se,’ he later told investigators.

…[T]he inspector general found that during a 17-day period, he received about 1,880 ‘access denials,’ wherein the computer system blocked his attempts to view Web sites that were deemed pornographic.

The supervisor later told an IG investigator that despite the blocked attempts, he still had been looking at pornography at work up to twice a day and it had ‘probably occurred for a long time.’
Disciplinary actions at NSF ranged from counseling to suspension to termination. Penalties at SEC included referral to the inspector general for investigation, as well as suspension or other reprimand. Some employees resigned.
HealthyMind.com reports the following 2003 statistics regarding Internet porn in the workplace:
• 70 percent of all Internet porn traffic occurs during the 9-to-5 workday
• Nearly one out of three companies has terminated an employee for inappropriate web use.
• 20% of men admit accessing pornography at work
• 13% of women admit accessing pornography at work

The activities of porn-surfing SEC workers, a small fraction of the overall work force, have been serious enough to warrant a mention in each of the past four semiannual reports sent to Congress by the SEC’s office of inspector general.

Additionally, statistics compiled by Family Safe Media reveal that in 2006, Louisville ranked fifth out of ten U.S. cities in Internet keyword searches for “porn” and fourth in searches for “sex.”

At the end of the day, as the Times reports, employee viewing of pornography via the Internet is an increasing problem that is embarrassing, oftentimes undetectable, and expensive. According to Allan Bachman, education manager for the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, such employees are “simply…stealing time. They’re getting paid to do something that they’re not supposed to be doing.”