Man Stores AI-Generated Robot Porn on His Government Computer, Loses Access to Nuclear Secrets

[Nevilledog]

https://www.404media.co/man-stores-ai-generated-robot-porn-on-his-government-computer-loses-access-to-nuclear-secrets/

No paywall link
https://archive.li/qSM2x

A man who works for the people overseeing America’s nuclear stockpile has lost his security clearance after he uploaded 187,000 pornographic images to a Department of Energy (DOE) network. As part of an appeals process in an attempt to get back his security clearance, the man told investigators he felt his bosses spied on him too much and that the interrogation over the porn snafu was akin to the “Spanish Inquisition."

On March 23, 2023, a DOE employee attempted to back up his personal porn collection. His goal was to use the 187,000 images collected over the past 30 years as training data for an AI-image generator. He said he had depression, something he’d struggled with since he was a kid. “During the depressive episode he felt ‘extremely isolated and lonely,’ and started ‘playing’ with tools that made generative images as a coping strategy, including ‘robot pornography,’” according to a DOE report on the incident.

Fueled by depression, the man meant to back up his collection and create a base for training AI to make better “robot pornography” but he uploaded it to the government computer by accident. He didn’t realize what he’d done until DOE investigators came calling six months later to ask why their servers were now filled with thousands of pornographic pictures.

“The Individual ‘thought that even though 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 DOE report said.

According to the report, the man was using his cellphone to look at AI-generated porn images, but the screen wasn’t big enough so he moved the pictures to his government computer. “He also reported that, since the 1990s, he had maintained a ‘giant compressed file with several directories of pornographic images,’ which he moved to his personal cloud storage drive so he could use them to make generative images,” he said. “It was this directory of sexually explicit images that was ultimately uploaded to his employer’s network when he performed a back-up procedure on March 23, 2023.”

*snip*


Huh

[nilram]

1. They shouldn't have allowed any access

from a non-government computer to his government cloud. I guess it took porn to highlight the problem, but apparently anybody with credentials could be copying "nuclear secrets" to their personal machines. They shouldn't be allowing connections from those personal machines.

[hunter]

5. Certainly. That's the big issue here.

The lesser issue is: How the hell does anyone mistake their work computers or phones from their personal computers or phones?

One might reasonably conclude he was playing with his porn collection while they were paying him to work.

[yellow dahlia]

6. Good points.

[sir pball]

9. The network with the secrets is not the same network he was on.

Many moons ago I worked for Energy; I only had a Guest clearance but still had to go through training on the security structure and protocols so I'm at least sort of aware of how it works.

The "government computer" he moved his porn stash to was 100% his non-secure office machine. I'd wager it was connected to ESNet, Energy's ultra-high-speed global network designed to allow researchers to share massive amounts of data quickly and easily…but not securely.

The secure stuff is on a dedicated, contained network akin to JWICS, a totally isolated and hardened system. Terminals are locked down tighter than a Supermax; there is no way you're uploading personal data from one of them. I'm sure there's DUers who have TS/SCI clearances and understand you can't just plug a flash drive into a secure box, the Q stuff (DoE's highest security level) is the same if not tighter.

He lost his clearance for being spectacularly inappropriate and careless, and I'm totally on board with that, but he wasn't putting XXX pics in the same directory as W-80 blueprints.

[JoseBalow]

2. Rule 34 - If it exists, there is porn of it

[Nevilledog]

8. LOL

[Silent Type]

3. Sounds like DOGE should have fired him rather than competent employees.

[LudwigPastorius]

4. 187,000 images

Damn.

That's a wank bank to rival Mike Johnson's.

...and robot porn?

[flvegan]

7. AI-Generated Robot Porn? How...interesting.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. No kink-shaming from me.