A US Department of Energy (DOE) employee has lost his security clearance after uploading *checks notes* 187,000 pornographic images to the DOE network (first reported by 404 Media). The individual’s appeal against this has been made public as per DOE guidelines which, while not naming him, says he’s “a distinguished professional with decades of experience and significant responsibilities (reflecting the Individual’s role at the DOE site and professional experience).”
The bare facts: On March 23, 2023, this employee backed up his personal porn collection, which consisted of 187,000 images collected over “25-30 years”. The individual claimed that due to long-standing issues with “depression” they had been experimenting with generative imaging tools to create what the DOE refers to as “robot pornography”: this term refers to AI-generated images featuring ‘humans’, rather than smut featuring Robocop and the Terminator going at it. The intention with the large-scale upload was to use the images as training data for the AI tools.
Here’s the problem (well, one of them). The man uploaded these 187K images to a DOE network, using his DOE-issued computer, and didn’t realise he’d done this until DOE investigators came a-knockin’ six months down the line.
“The Individual ‘thought that even though his personal drives were connected to [the DOE network], they were somehow partitioned, and his personal material would not contaminate his [government computer],” said the DOE report.
