How many times have we heard about our tax dollars paying for government workers who spend their days watching porn at work?

Which city in the United States is home to the most pornography viewers? The answer is Washington, D.C., the seat of the nation’s power players. Do you ever wonder why the Department of Justice does not enforce obscenity laws? Could the viewing habits of D.C.’s denizens influence the lack of enforcement?

The source of this information is PornHub, a XXX website. The New York Daily News carried the story about the study and noted that the rate of online pornography watched in D.C. is 14.18 videos per person in a year. While that may not sound like a lot to some, consider that the D.C. rate is nearly twice the rate of the second highest porn viewing state, Hawaii, where it is 7.57 per person.

We know that not everyone watches pornography, so that means the people actually watching online pornography in Washington are watching a lot more videos than 14.18 each. Who is watching them, and are they doing so at work? Does it influence their work?

How many times have we heard about our tax dollars paying for government workers who spend their days watching porn at work? One Washington Times article lists these agencies that have employees with porn problems: Pentagon, Secret Service, Transportation Security Administration, U.S. State Department, Department of Homeland Security, Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Missile Defense Agency. The article quotes a cyber-security expert who warns, “Many pornographic websites are infected and criminals and foreign intelligence services such as Russia’s use them to gain access and harvest data.”

You would think that national security nugget would be a good enough reason for prosecuting obscenity producers and purveyors, but evidently it is not.

In 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder shut down the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, which was established under Pres. George W. Bush’s Administration. A Politico article quoted Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) in reaction to this move:

“Attorney General Holder told the Judiciary Committee last year that this task force was the centerpiece of the strategy to combat adult obscenity,” Sen. Hatch told POLITICO in a statement Friday. “Rather than initiate a single new case since President Obama took office, however, the only development in this area has been the dismantling of the task force. As the toxic waste of obscenity continues to spread and harm everyone it touches, it appears the Obama Administration is giving up without a fight.”

According to the PornHub statistics, obscenity blankets Washington. The lack of adult obscenity prosecutions is harming everyone. While the Department of Justice focuses on prosecuting cases of child pornography, those who are watching adult pornography may turn to child pornography when the adult material no longer excites them. If adult pornography prosecutions are non-existent, a gateway to child pornography is left in place to ensnare new viewers.

So, while some of D.C.’s denizens turn a blind eye to punishing the producers and distributors of obscenity, others are glued to their porn-filled computer screens. The key to why obscenity, while illegal, thrives in D.C., and beyond may be one mouse click away on screens hidden behind closed doors and cubicle walls in offices throughout Washington.

A news report from Osceola County, Florida states that 40 men were arrested and charged with trying to solicit sex with a child via the Internet during “Operation Red Cheeks.”  The men range in age from 18 to a man who will be 71 next month.  Child rape is acceptable evidently by teenagers still in high school and those old enough to be a grandfather to the child they hoped to abuse and exploit.

With the click of their computer mouse, these men sent messages – and sometimes pornographic images – to people they thought were children or, even more astounding, parents or guardians of children, to arrange a place to meet and have sex with a child.  The recipients were actually undercover detectives who deserve a lot of praise for being able to stomach doing a job like that.  Imagine chatting online with scum like those arrested.

So, who are the arrestees?  Are they society’s dregs?  Sadly, they could be your neighbor.

The arrested include a high school student, several college students, sales representatives, construction workers, a soldier, quite a few unemployed people, an “areole technician” (seems like a suspect answer to the question of what their occupation is and further proof of their degenerate behavior), a retired bee keeper (anyone else thinking of justice for him  and the rest of these men involving an angry swarm of bees?), a plant manager, a personal trainer, a warehouse clerk, a dispatcher, a wholesale dealer, an engineer, an eighth grade teacher, a vendor, a manager, a Public Works employee, a truck loader, a consultant, an information technology worker (you think this one might have been smart enough not to get caught), a professional golfer, and a swim coach.

Think about their professions, and then think about how many of them you or your child might encounter each day.

Take a look at their pictures.  You could walk by them on the street, and you probably wouldn’t look twice.  They don’t look like monsters, but they are.

Carlson Wagonlit Travel: One of the white hats of the business world.

With the Penn State child rape scandal (and now Syracuse) still in the news, child sexual exploitation is a growing concern across the nation.  In addition to pedophiles abusing children for their own sick sexual kicks, there is a whole industry of pimps and criminal networks that provide children for those whose sexual obsessions drive them to rent the bodies of younger and younger victims.  Every year, thousands of children are trapped in sex trafficking, prostitution, pornography, and sex tourism – all victims coerced into a vicious cycle of abuse that robs them of their innocence.

According to the Department of Justice’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section on Trafficking and Sex Tourism, “Each year an estimated 800,000 to 900,000 human beings are bought, sold, or forced across the world’s borders [2003 U.S. State Department estimate].  Among them are hundreds of thousands of teenage girls, and others as young as 5, who fall victim to the sex trade.”

When faced with such daunting figures – which represent not just sheer numbers, but young lives ravaged by a very real, and often undetected, kind of slavery – it is easy to get discouraged, particularly when there are so many who choose to remain ignorant to the facts or who throw up their hands in defeat. Thus, it is encouraging to see shining examples of those who are willing to take a bold stand, especially in the private sector.

One recent example is Carlson Winglit Travel (CWT), a $27.8 billion travel agency that caters to business and leisure travelers; CWT has joined the fight to help protect children against trafficking and child sex tourism.  On Nov. 16, CWT began inserting advisories on their electronic itineraries (issued in the U.S.) for passengers traveling to countries where child sex tourism is widespread, providing them with a hotline by which they can report suspicious behavior.

The advisory states the following:

UNICEF REPORTS THAT TRAFFICKING IN CHILDREN FOR PURPOSES OF SEXUAL EXPLOITATION IS A GLOBAL PROBLEM.  THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT ADVISES ITS CITIZENS THAT ENGAGING IN SEXUAL CONDUCT WITH MINORS IS A CRIME AND IF COMMITTED OUTSIDE THE U.S. IS PUNISHABLE UPON RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES. TRAVELERS CAN HELP BY REPORTING SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY TO THE NATIONAL HUMAN TRAFFICKING HOTLINE:  1-888-373-7888.  WHEN CALLING FROM OUTSIDE THE U.S.: +1-202-507-7966. CARLSON WAGONLIT TRAVEL SUPPORTS THE PROTECTION OF THE WORLD’S CHILDREN.

The effort of this travel agency is commendable.  CWT’s ability to influence travelers is substantial, as it provides services to some of the biggest and most profitable corporations worldwide, issuing hundreds of thousands of itineraries on a daily basis.

“As I read it, it just made me very happy to be a part of my company,” said Tammy Conderman, service center manager at CWT.  “Just knowing that our company is taking a stand and putting effort forward against these horrible crimes brought tears to my eyes.”

“This is most definitely a praise [report] and the timing could not be better,” said Debra Kohl, field coordinator for Concerned Women for America of Missouri and a personal friend of Conderman.  “Bringing awareness to a problem is the first step to solving the problem.”

Perhaps such examples of privatized corporations taking action to make a difference are exactly what our nation needs right now to serve as wake-up calls to those who sit around or occupy parks, waiting for government to solve all our problems.

Our guest blogger today is Lauren Levy, an intern with Concerned Women for America’s (CWA) Ronald Reagan Memorial Internship Program.  Click here for more information on internships with CWA.

How about protecting the children?

Inter-agency cooperation has always been vital to stemming the flow of child pornography and bringing the victimizers to justice.  So, when the Pentagon’s Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) received a report from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that 264 individuals — military and civilian employees working at the Pentagon — had purchased child pornography online, it was nothing out of the ordinary.

What was out of the ordinary was the fact that 76 of those individuals had Secret or higher security clearances — nine of them holding “Top Secret Sensitive Compartmentalized Information” clearances, meaning they had access to our military’s most sensitive information. 

Of the 264 named by ICE, 212 never even came under investigation.  Of those who were investigated, including an Army lieutenant colonel assigned to the Secretary of Defense’s office, the vast majority were never even charged.  It didn’t help that these cases dated back to 2006, making the seizure of evidence difficult.

These folks were buying and using child pornography at work, right under the noses of the Pentagon’s own IT department.  The severe security risk that child pornography poses from both malware and extortion alone — not even touching on the harm it does to children — was reason enough for the nation’s highest military office to be more vigilant.

Whether it was a matter of blocking access to known child pornography sites or the use of software tools that flag large data files potentially containing pornography, these cases should have been prevented or detected by the Pentagon’s security and IT housekeeping.

DICS’s own report says that the bulk of these cases were closed without any investigation because of “the need to focus more resources on other DCIS investigative priorities.”  Other priorities?  Our military forces in Afghanistan have “other priorities” too, but that hasn’t stopped their prosecution of individuals downloading child pornography.  The criminal investigative offices of the individual services, Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI),  and the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command — sister organizations to the DCIS that are equally short on resources — routinely investigate and prosecute child pornography cases at military installations around the globe. 

What gives those assigned to the Pentagon a pass? 

It’s time that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates call for a reassessment of the Pentagon’s IT policies, from the detection of illegal material to the information about policy violations reaching the appropriate commander and DCIS for action.  Users of child pornography should not be allowed to continue with unblemished careers.

Yet again, an investigation into the computer habits of government employees has revealed practices that are not just shocking, they are down right despicable.

The latest report shows that dozens of Pentagon officials and contractors have been purchasing and downloading illegal child pornography — sometimes even using their work computers to buy and view it.

Purchasing and viewing child pornography is never justified.  Child pornography violates all standards of human decency and is a sick perversion that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

The fact that government officials — paid with our tax dollars and supposedly working to defend our country — are indulging in this illegal and immoral activity is horrific and completely unacceptable.

Alone, these allegations would be appalling enough.  However, this is only the latest in a long string of discoveries of malfeasance.  Still, when the Transportation Services Authority recently announced its list of banned website categories for employee computers, pornography was not on that list.

How many times will the gross abuse of taxpayer resources have to come to light before the federal government finally does something?

By ignoring this culture of corruption, our national security officials are putting our safety — and the safety of our children — in jeopardy.

At the very least, all government employees immediately involved in this child pornography operation should be terminated without pay.  So far, no other government agency caught up in a pornography scandal has taken sufficient action.