Thursday, Aug 2, 2012    Text size: 

WASHINGTON — Contractors and employees at the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, a division of the Pentagon, received a warning from its executive director to stop using their government computers to surf the Internet for porn sites, according to a Bloomberg News report.

In a one-page memo sent on July 27, Executive Director John James Jr. wrote that in recent months government employees and contractors were detected “engaging in inappropriate use of the MDA network,” the story said.

“Specifically, there have been instances of employees and contractors accessing websites, or transmitting messages, containing pornographic or sexually explicit images."

James continued, “These actions are not only unprofessional, they reflect time taken away from designated duties, are in clear violation of federal and DoD and regulations, consume network resources and can compromise the security of the network though the introduction of malware or malicious code."

Anyone identified as a violator of the rules faces referral for disciplinary action that includes possible suspension or termination, according to the report.

An MDA agency spokesman told Bloomberg that the memo was written in response to “a few people downloading material from some websites that were known to have had virus and malware issues.”