The thing about profit as a motivator is that it incentivises actions that increase revenue over actions that have a net benefit to the public, the absence of this is what makes the ABC so crucial. Having a broadcaster be publicly-funded gives us a journalistic institution that doesn’t pander to the fickle whims of audiences, but instead tackles the social and political issues in Australia that really matter. The ABC can afford to ignore that stories about nude celebrities trapped in caves are the only ones that bring in traffic (and thus ad revenue) and can focus on what really matters: inept public servants looking at horny stuff on work computers.
The unnamed gentleman in question came to the attention of the ABC as one of a number of ‘computer misuse investigations’ surfaced by a Freedom of Information Act request. One man typing “breast images, please computer, thank you” into Google on his work-issued swiftly ageing Dell desktop is not, I imagine, a particularly uncommon or newsworthy story, but what makes this one so compelling is the seemingly endless depth of bizarre detail. Par example:
Most photos were of naked or nearly naked women, which the man later admitted looking at “mainly for sexual purposes” but added “probably one tenth of it” was for his hobby as a self-taught pencil sketcher.
There is something captivatingly earnest about a person feeling compelled to offer this tidbit up. One tenth certainly isn’t an amount that excuses the other nine tenths and, frankly, it doesn’t feel like it’s being suggested as an excuse. By all appearances, the man just wanted to honestly share that he sometimes uses horny pics to do life* drawing.
Then there’s this, the unbelievably evocative, almost Coen Brothers–esque image of bumbling investigators being foiled by window blinds:
When the man’s bosses suspected the misconduct, they hired investigators who looked up the computer’s internet history and even physically photographed him through his office window from outside the building. The first attempt at the latter failed due to closed blinds.
An image reinforced by this later snippet:
At one point, investigators tried to obtain a forensic copy of the hard-drive but the computer was “offline or asleep”.
There’s also the charming acknowledgement that, although he didn’t recognise the titties specifically, they were the kind he’s into:
When shown the images in the interview, the man said he could not recall if they were the exact photos he accessed but conceded they were “absolutely the type I was looking for”.
To me, one of the shining highlights is how it introduced the phrase ‘sexy incidents at the Olympics‘ into my psyche, from which I fear it will never be dislodged:
Other times, he would be granted access to the photos because they were on sporting websites — he said he often looked up “sexy incidents” at the Olympics — or hosting websites that had “everything from landscapes to adult content”.
Another oddly compelling thing is the quiet matter-of-factness with which he refers to the constant drive to get horned up on the clock:
The man said he would often spend “a couple of hours” scrolling through photos and the occasional movie when he was bored after finishing his work — or when the work “was not particularly interesting”. . . When asked whether the any prohibited messages deterred his behaviour, he said: “No, it didn’t, I have to be honest there. Maybe a couple of times [I would think] ‘I’m sick of this, I’ll move onto something else or listen to a bit of music or something’, but more often than not it didn’t stop me.”
You absolutely need to read the full thing, which you can do right here. Walkley for Clare Sibthorpe immediately.
