According to a news article today at OneNewsNow, SEC employees are under investigation for viewing pornography on their work computers.  Action ranging from counseling to dismissal has already been taken against some employees.

Rick Schatz of the National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families told OneNewsNow that pornography viewing has become a growing problem in the workplace, and companies are taking measures to rectify the issue.  According to Schatz:

One step taken by some companies and government agencies has been to install filters, while another has been to put in monitoring systems that keep track of employees’ ‘access denials’.   It reports all of the websites that an individual tries to visit and then rates the content of those websites for the sexual content.

The latter was how one person at the SEC was caught. The monitoring system revealed that he tried to visit nearly 1,800 rejected porn websites over a span of 17 days. In addition, roughly 24 other SEC workers have faced investigation for their pornography viewing from government computers.

Sexual misconduct investigations, oftentimes involving pornographic emails or website visits, are prudent for employers who suspect this type of conduct is going on.  This conduct should be promptly investigated and rectified, for many reasons, one of which is that the conduct could later appear as an allegation in sexual harassment claims by co-workers of the employee visiting the porn sites.  Imagine a female employee walking by a cubicle of a co-worker sitting at his desk viewing a streaming video of "Girls Gone Wild" on spring break.  You can bet if this female ever makes a hostile work environment sexual harassment claim, she will put this arrow in her quiver. Even though the conduct was not directed at her, she saw it, was offended by it, and could very likely claim that this type of misconduct was rampant and management "knew or should have known" about it.  

The sexual misconduct investigator will need to search suspected employees’ computers.  As soon as this type of investigation begins, the subject computers should be locked down immediately to avoid tampering.  The investigator can work with an IT professional if necessary to insure a thorough search of emails and visited websites is conducted.