Drum Roll Please: The SEC’s Next Target Is…Porn-Watching SEC Workers?

Employees and contractors working for the Securities and Exchange Commission use their computers to get their work done, investigate suspicious trades, and otherwise help to ensure that the federal securities laws are followed. Right? Sure. But, according to an article by Jim McElhatton in The Washington Times, there also were more than 1,800 attempts to look up pornography on one computer over a two week period. McElhatton, who accessed records through the Freedom of Information Act, adds that a couple of dozen SEC workers have been caught viewing pornography on their computers and faced internal investigations. 

Of course, we would not be reporting this article here unless we found a financial fraud angle. We have (albeit it is a bit attenuated). The article quotes Allan Bachman of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners as saying that these workers are “stealing time" and are “getting paid to do something that they're not supposed to be doing."
 
The article is available at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/02/sec-workers-investigated-for-viewing-porn-at-work//print/.