WASHNGTON – When it comes to loopholes, nobody knows more about how to create and use them than the U.S. Congress. It’s a skill set which comes with lots of practice — practice which includes the occasional need to close such loopholes once public awareness of them has created sufficient backlash.
Sometimes the statutory loopholes are so artfully placed, they sound perfectly reasonable, maybe even necessary, to the unsuspecting reader.
Take the latest version of the Eliminating Pornography from Agencies Act (“EPAA”) for instance, the proposed congressional response to reports of federal workers whiling away their on-duty hours by endlessly surfing online porn. While on its face the legislation seems designed to end the phenomenon of federal employees watching porn at work, the Act contains a big, fat loophole just begging to be exploited by horny functionaries.
Before we get to the loophole, though, let’s look at what our social betters in Congress have to say about this important, weighty issue.
“Somebody spending four to six hours a day looking at pornography — I don’t even know how you do that — on taxpayers’ dime is a bit much,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings [D-Md]. “I believe this is already prohibited, but at the same time it won’t hurt to make it clear. It’s a real serious matter, because in the time employees should be doing work and are looking at this pornography, it means certain things aren’t getting done.”
Cummings didn’t specify which “certain things” aren’t being done due to all this porn surfing, but lest you think this is just a pet peeve of one liberal congressman, it’s important to note his concerns are echoed across the aisle, by none other than the chairman of the same House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on which Cummings is the senior Democrat member.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz [R-Utah] said he “can’t imagine having to sit by a person who is doing these things on a regular basis.” (I feel compelled to note that, as a conservative member of congress, it’s quite possible Chaffetz does sit by a person who surfs porn on a regular basis.)
“These are the seediest of the bad apples,” Chafetz said of federal porn surfers. “These people have got a serious problem and need desperate help.”
While I’m not sure why anyone would want (let alone need) help that is “desperate,” I do see a clear and obvious means for federal porn surfers to continue watching porn on the clock without running afoul of the EPAA.
Unlike a lot of other legislation under consideration by Congress, the text of the EPAA is straightforward, clear and extremely brief. In fact, the full gist of the act is contained in a single paragraph: “Except as provided in subsection (b), not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget shall issue guidelines that prohibit the access of a pornographic or other explicit web site from a Federal computer.”
And what does subsection (b) provide as an exception to the above? Why, it’s the wonderful catchall known as “investigative purposes,” of course.
“The prohibition described in subsection (a) shall not apply to any Federal computer that is used for an investigative purpose that requires accessing a pornographic web site,” subsection (b) states.
You know what this means, right? Suddenly, shortly after this legislation is signed into law, a whole lot of employees of the EPA, NASA, the Pentagon, the Department of Justice and other federal agencies are going to be initiating lengthy, detailed “investigations” of porn sites.
All they need to do is come up with the right justification, and these porn-addicted feds will have an ironclad excuse for the omnipresence of tube sites in their browsing history.
Hey there, random Department of Labor employee, why did you conduct a search for “Latina porn” and then spend five hours clicking through to various videos present in the search response? Why, I was researching the adult entertainment industry to confirm individual studios’ compliance with the equal opportunity employment provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, of course!
Why is a NASA engineer spending several hours per shift watching gangbang videos? Well, what better way to determine if anybody associated with the agency is illegally firing his or her bodily fluids across international borders in violation of federal export control laws?
Sure, these justifications would be an insane stretch of all logic and reason, but since when does the federal government care enough to dig past obvious bullshit people in its employ come up with to avoid scrutiny under the law?
Rather than get upset over the inevitable abuse of § 2(b) of the EPAA, I say the adult industry should embrace and encourage all the “investigations” to come.
Heck, maybe we could even offer to build a “backdoor” federal workers can use for convenient access to our members’ area updates to help improve government efficiency. If we do that, at least the investigations won’t be stalled for the 12 hours it typically takes for the same content to show up on tube sites.
