It is fairly commonly known these days that:
- Employers can monitor employees’ email.
- Law enforcement officials can search almost anyone’s email.
- Government employees’ email is subject to being made public.
One place you might think those principles were especially well-known would be at a prosecutor’s office. Not so for at least 38 current and former employees of the Pennsylvania attorney general, including several powerful public figures, who sent or received pornography using their work email. From the Associated Press:
At least eight prominent Pennsylvania officials — including the current head of the state police, Pennsylvania’s top environmental regulator, and a former spokesman for Gov. Tom Corbett — were among the commonwealth employees who sent or received hundreds of sexually explicit photos, videos and messages from state email accounts between 2008 and 2012, according to documents made available Thursday by the state Attorney General’s Office.
The current attorney general, Kathleen Kane, released the names of some of the implicated individuals last week. Kane’s office did not say how many employees had actively sent or forwarded the messages vis a vis the number who had received them.
The emails include explicit photos and videos of women and men engaged in oral sex, anal sex and intercourse. The videos had titles such as “Cigar,” “Chin strap,” “Golf Ball washer,” “Nascar victory” and “Rocking Horse.”
The photographs included naked women and motivational posters with slogans such as “Devotion” and “Willingness” that depicted women performing sexual acts on their male bosses.
The emails were discovered during a review conducted by Kane into the office’s handling of the Jerry Sandusky case.
