Life

How Did Porn End Up on a Gov't Website?!

You may be accustomed to illicit images appearing on your phone (thanks, dick pics!) or on your Twitter (thanks, Anthony Weiner!). But I'm betting even you would be shocked to find porn on the Ohio Department of Natural Resource’s website. But it happened! The Columbus Dispatch reported over the weekend that a video file entitled “Sexy Babe” had somehow made its way into the website’s Risk Based Data Management System. In addition to containing “comprehensive well data for over 100,000 wells permitted since 1980,” the management system also plays host to a file transfer protocol (FTP) site, which allows companies to transfer large files like maps to the ODNR.

The FTP site, however, didn’t actually require any special login information to use it — which means that anyone could upload whatever the heck they wanted onto it at any time. “Sexy Babes” and one other porn video were apparently uploaded by a mystery person on February 21, escaping notice for an entire week. When the two sexy vids were finally spotted, a number of music files and a few other unspecified, “non-official-looking” files were found as well.

Was it a joke? Was it a mistake, albeit a stupid one? Was it intentional? We may never know. Although the funniest scenario would be the second — perhaps an employee of the ODNR took a little work break to view his or her favorite adult video, somehow inadvertently transferring it to the website in the process (and this, kids, is why we don’t work and watch porn at the same time). If it was intentional, why would anyone purposely load porn onto a government website? ODNR spokeswoman Eileen Corson explained it as follows: “Someone was using it as cloud storage. Unfortunately, that happens.” Way to stick it to the man, Ohio Porn Bandit.

In any event, Corson noted that the files had since been taken down; login credentials will also henceforth be required to use the FTP site. Which, really, should have been the case from the beginning, no?

I wonder what the NSA would have to say about this…