Keeping your personal and professional lives separate is something that most workers abide by, yet one government workers made a costly error when he accidentally uploaded over 187,000 pornographic images to the same database that stores America's nuclear secrets.
The Department of Energy is one of the most important government sectors in the United States, and despite Elon Musk and DOGE's attempts to dismantle it earlier this year, it has persisted and continues to guard the country's nuclear powers.
Understandably, working at the Department of Energy requires a number of security clearances and a high level of trust that certain information won't be allowed to escape the building, yet one worker has had his privileges ripped away after a rather costly mistake.
As reported by 404 Media, one unnamed Department of Energy employee was recently involved in a now-public appeal to regain his security clearance, as it was revoked after officials discovered over 187,000 pornographic images he'd uploaded to the government's servers.
Advert
This wasn't a deliberate action, as he meant to store it on his own personal partition drive but didn't realize that this also meant that it would be stored on official government servers too.
"The individual thought that even thought his personal drives were connected to [his employer's], they were somehow partitioned, and his personal material would not contaminate his [government-issued computer]," a report from his access appeal reads.
The 187,000-strong collection was in fact one that he had built up over the course of around 25 to 30 years, and he was planning on using it as training data for an AI-image generator, specifically focusing on creating better 'robot pornography'.
Reports from this discovery reveal that the man was allegedly already using his phone at work to view AI-generated pornographic content, but made the decision to move up a level and to a bigger screen by uploading his extensive collection onto his employer's PC.
It wasn't until around six months after the content was uploaded that officials discovered it on the government systems, and according to the department's psychologist, he "was not thinking multiple steps ahead or considering the consequences at the time because he was so depressed."
That hasn't stopped him from failing to see the flaws of his own actions though, as his appeal to regain security clearance saw him reveal that he "did not think it was very wrong," despite admitting that he violated HR protocol.
He also "asserted that his employer 'was spying on him a little too much' [...] and compared the interview with his employer following the discovery of his conduct to 'the Spanish Inquisition'."
It was determined by the psychologist that the risk of 'another depressive episode' in the future was "very high," and therefore the decision was made to not regrant his security clearance, although it's unclear whether he's also able to retrieve his 30-year collection in the process.