Porn-prone bureaucrat will keep his job

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This article was published 31/12/2010 (5597 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — A federal government employee who spent as much as five hours a day searching pornographic personal ads on his office computer and sending naked photos of himself from his work email has kept his job.

The Canadian Border Services Agency has investigated allegations an employee in its headquarters in Ottawa was reading and responding to sexually explicit ads on Craigslist, Kijiji and other sites while at work. A member of the public who thought it inappropriate to use a government email address to respond to ads tipped the department in January.

The professional standards investigation found the unnamed employee spent 176 hours — about 41/2 work weeks — on the Internet over a three-month period. A search of his CBSA email account found he had used it to send and receive explicit descriptions and photos, including pictures of genitalia and sex acts.

“He exchanges emails with interested parties and gives detailed descriptions of himself, including his sexual organs,” the investigation report said. “He speaks of his sexual preferences and comments on explicit photographs of sexual acts sent to him by people responding to his ad.”

The employee will also “forward to interested parties naked photos of himself (head excluded). These pictures are extremely explicit and inappropriate.”

The numerous hours spent on the Internet every day affects his work, the report concluded. Investigators found the employee had breached the agency’s policy on the use of electronic resources.

But the CBSA would not say what disciplinary action was taken.

“We can confirm that following the professional standards investigation, appropriate disciplinary measures were taken,” spokeswoman Esme Bailey said in an email. “We can also tell you that the employee does not occupy a position that interacts with the general public.”

Bailey said the CBSA allows limited personal use of email and the Internet, provided it complies with other policies.

“The incidence of misuse of workplace equipment is very low.”

Although the CBSA restricts access to Craigslist, the employee was able to get to the personal ads by using a variant of the address not blocked by the department’s servers. The web logs show he spent the most time on usedottawa.com, a classified ads site, and investigators said it was safe to assume some of this time was spent on its personal listings.

The employee had been working for the department for six years at the time of the investigation.

During an interview with investigators, he first said he was accessing the ads on his lunch hour and breaks. Later, he said he spent three hours a day searching personal ads and said he couldn’t argue if the web logs showed he sometimes spent five hours daily online.

He compared his habit to an addiction, like drugs or gambling and “his pigheaded nature pushed him to continue even knowing it was wrong,” the interview summary said. “He wanted to go to the very end like a gambler who does so and ends up losing everything in the end.”

— Postmedia News