Congressman Wants to Block Porn from Government Computers

Congressman Mark Meadows of North Carolina wants to make it illegal for federal employees to access pornography from their office computers.

It is likely that most Americans don’t even know this is an issue, but Meadows and others say it’s a big problem, including investigators from government agencies.

An Inspector General’s Report showed that one employee of the Environmental Protection Agency was watching 6 or more hours of pornography every day on his office computer. The employee had downloaded 7,000 porn files onto his taxpayer-owned computer. As of last September the EPA had still not fired him from his $120,000 a year job.

The EPA employee is far from the only one. An employee with the Federal Communications Commission spent up to eight hours a week on office porn watching. He said it was due to boredom. One Treasury Department employee viewed upwards of 13,000 porn images in a six-week period.

Investigations have been conducted at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Commerce Department, and the General Services Administration.

Viewing porn on office computers is already against governmental guidelines. Meadows hope to tighten that up with the Eliminating Pornography from Agencies Act. Meadows said, “It’s appalling that it requires an act of Congress to ensure that federal agencies block access to these sites.”

It is not a difficult thing to do. Amtrak’s Acela, for instance, blocks any site related to pornography, even Playboy, from those using Amtrak’s proprietary WiFi services.

Access to porn through WiFi services is an issue on the low-boil around the country. Some activist mothers are trying to have porn blocked at public libraries but are running into resistance from First Amendment advocates, including the American Library Association.

Donna Rice Hughes, who runs a group called Enough is Enough, is running a campaign to get Starbucks and McDonalds to block porn sites from their restaurant WiFi networks.