Every week, authorities at the Fort Sill Network Enterprise Center investigate dozens of account users who may be using their government computers to view pornographic websites.
Last week, five cases of employees actively accessing prohibited and illegal sites were referred to the Army Criminal Investigation Command or the users' supervisors for disciplinary actions.
Viewing pornography on government computers is on the rise, said NEC officials, and they want to educate employees about the responsibilities of using government computers.
"Inappropriate activity will be detected and individuals will receive punitive action," said Joseph Person Jr., NEC chief, Information Assurance Division. "Our job is to educate the user so they don't fall down that rabbit hole."
The Army differentiates between illegal and prohibited websites, Person said. Any site featuring child pornography is illegal. Mature or adult-themed sites such as gambling, pornography, dating services, are classified as prohibited.
Prohibited and illegal sites may not be viewed on government computers or Blackberries at any time, said Jeff Jones, installation IA network manager. Even if a user takes a government laptop home or on temporary duty those activities are still unauthorized even if the computer is connected to a commercial Internet provider.
Filters
The NEC subscribes to a service to filter illegal and prohibited sites on the Fort Sill network, however, it is not perfect, Jones said.
The filter service views and studies websites and categorizes them such as sports, news or adult-themed. Sites categorized as pornographic and adult-themed are blocked from the network.
But the cataloging may not always be accurate. A website might be classified as social media, because that's what the filter service found on the site's homepage and its subsequent research, Jones said. Still, a user accessing the site and getting into its many layers may find that it is a sex service or contains pornographic material. The filtering service is notified of this and asked to reconsider its classification of the site.
There are millions of websites, new ones are added every day and others change every day, Jones said. "It's hard to keep up -- the filter lags a little bit," he said.
"That's a constant effort on our part," Person said.
Activities monitored
All Web activity on the Fort Sill network is monitored 24/7, logged and an individual's access history can be analyzed, Person said.
NEC officials said they understand that employees occasionally stumble upon a porn site. What they are concerned about are the users who actively engage and interact with banned sites.
"If we determine that it's child pornography, we automatically notify CID," Person said. "If it's mature-type content or gambling, then we have procedures to notify the user's supervisor and chain of command."
NEC is not involved in the disciplinary procedures, but provides any documentation that might be needed for the proceedings, Person said. And, NEC can immediately disable a user's account for accessing obscene materials. Then their supervisor or unit commander is notified, Jones said. For a first offense, the user's account is suspended for a minimum of seven days.
Punitive actions can also range from Uniform Code of Military Justice actions for servicemembers to job termination to prison sentences for child pornography, according to Army Regulations 25-2 Information Management Information Assurance.
AR-2 and its Chapter 4-5, r. (7) on Acceptable Use Policy, can be viewed from the Fort Sill Network Enterprise Center Information Assurance Division site.
Double whammy
Still, employees try to circumvent the system, Person said.
Workers will bring in personal laptops and plug them into the network ports believing the laptops can't be monitored, he said.
All computer hardware has a media access control address, or MAC, identifying the computer, explained Person. If a laptop does not have a valid Fort Sill MAC, it will be blocked from the network or its activity will be tracked.
"There's a myth that 'I will not get caught on my personal system,'" Person said.
Jones added: "That's actually a double whammy because it's also against regulations to use a personal computer (on the Fort Sill network)."
For more information, computer users should check with their information assurance security officers or security managers.
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