Some of the same folks who have access to all of our digital communications data are using equipment at the National Security Agency to view child porn— and the agency can’t even explain how widespread the sickening behavior is among its employees.
That’s according to remarks made by Daniel Payne, director of the Defense Security Service, and Kemp Ensor, NSA security director, at a conference last week in Virginia.
“The amount of child porn I see is just unbelievable,” Payne said.
“What people do [at work] is amazing,” Ensor added, saying part of the problem is that the agency is comprised of “introverts staring at computer screens” day after day.
In response to questions from The Daily Beast following the remarks, NSA officials said they don’t bother tracking “the number of times child porn has been found” or how often law enforcement was notified.
In an official statement, the NSA said: “NSA is a professional foreign-intelligence and information-assurance organization with a highly disciplined workforce, serving around the clock in some of the world’s most dangerous areas. We set high professional standards for our personnel and any violations of the law are appropriately reported.”
It’s still odd that the NSA didn’t provide specific figures, considering federal officials’ promises to find and prosecute government perverts following a child porn scandal involving the Pentagon in 2010.
The Boston Globe reported at the time:
The Pentagon agency has faced intense criticism in recent months for its part of a nationwide child pornography investigation that was spearheaded by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which has jurisdiction for such federal crimes under its mandate.
The Globe reported earlier this week the Pentagon had checked only 3,500 out of 5,200 people who were suspected of downloading child pornography.
The partial screening of that list, which was conducted in 2007, identified 302 people who were military personnel, civilian employees, or private contractors. Some of those held high-level security clearances and worked at sensitive intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on enemy communications. Several also accessed the images on their work computers, a separate violation.
Out of the 302 cases, 70 were eventually pursued, and only a handful resulted in prosecutions. The Pentagon inspector general said many cases were dropped for lack of evidence but also acknowledged that child pornography was not treated as one of its priorities at the time, when it was under different leadership.
Since then, there have been multiple other reports of perverts on the federal payroll looking at child porn on the taxpayer dime.
