Clearance Revoked for Uploading 187K Sexually Explicit Images to Government Network

In one of the more unusual Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Hearing and Appeals cases, a DOE contractor had his clearance eligibility revoked due to concerns about psychological conditions and misuse of information technology. The contractor subsequently appealed – below are the highlights of the case.

The contractor had collected over 187,000 sexually explicit images that he downloaded using his personal computer and stored them in a personal cloud account. One day, while he was setting up a work cloud storage account, he inadvertently connected his personal account to the work cloud account and during computer backup activities all the pornographic images got uploaded to the work computer network. This was subsequently discovered during a forensic examination because of suspicious activity on the network. The contractor was also being treated with medication and counseling for a major depressive disorder by his psychiatrist.

The contractor attempted to tie his psychological disorder to the incident at work involving the pornographic images as the reason for what happened, and outlined the steps he has taken to make sure it does not happen again. However, the appeals judge pointed out the contractor was a professional with decades of experience who knew viewing sexually explicit images on his government computer was not permissible. The judge also was of the opinion that the contractor had minimized the severity of his mental disorder and the incident involving the work cloud account. As a result, clearance eligibility was not reinstated.