For as long as there’s been pornography on the Internet, there’s been a problem with pornography at work

By JACK ENCARNACAO
The Patriot Ledger

There are stories of rushed resignations, hush-hush internal investigations and job terminations that take place behind closed doors. For as long as computers with Internet access have been in use in the workplace, companies have been losing employee time, money and productivity to porn sites.

Local examples abound.

A social studies teacher at Cohasset High School resigned in 2007 following allegations that he downloaded pornography onto a school computer. A town engineer in Stoughton resigned last year after an investigation found evidence that he kept child pornography on his office computer. Three years ago, reports emerged that an employee in the state Treasurer’s Office was released because he was downloading porn. The dean of Harvard Divinity School resigned in 1999 after thousands of pornographic images were found on a university computer.

“As soon as it became prevalent on the Web, it became a problem and we started dealing with it,” said Steve Schick, a spokesman for California-based Blue Coat Systems, a technology company that helps employers track workers’ Internet behavior.

Seventy percent of online porn viewing occurs during typical workday hours - between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. - says the book “In The Shadows of the Net: Breaking Free of Compulsive Online Sexual Behavior.”

A CyberPsychology and Behavior journal survey of 40,000 adults who use the Internet for sexual purposes showed 20 percent of respondents admitted to looking at porn at work back in 2001.

Experts say those who can’t stay away from Internet porn at home also struggle in the workplace.

In 2004, IBM fired an employee for accessing sex chat rooms on the clock. The employee, James Pacenza, of Montgomery, N.Y., sued the company, claiming he was disabled by Internet sex addiction and should therefore be covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Pacenza claimed he visited the site as a form of medication to escape traumatic thoughts of his time in Vietnam. A federal court in New York found in favor of IBM, but Pacenza’s lawyer plans to appeal.

For large employers, the concern about porn sites often has more to do with potential harm to the computer network than judgment about the behavior.

“A lot of (porn) sites will carry malicious content,” Schick said. “Not only is there the objectionable aspect, but there may be spyware and malicious code that’s a part of that.”

That’s the main concern for the state of Massachusetts, which has about 30,000 computers in its network.

Firewall software on state computers is designed to block spam and spyware, but the state does not block employees from Web sites, said Ellen Wright, the state’s director of information technology staffing.

“If there is any suspicions that somebody is abusing the policy, then we can monitor it for disciplinary reasons,” Wright said.

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