Government workers used cheating website
WASHINGTON — Hundreds of U.S. government employees — including some with sensitive jobs in the White House, Congress and law enforcement agencies — used Internet connections in their federal offices to access and pay membership fees to the cheating website Ashley Madison.
Many of the accounts exposed by hackers are traced back to federal workers. They included at least two assistant U.S. attorneys; an information technology administrator in the Executive Office of the President; a division chief, an investigator and a trial attorney in the Justice Department; a government hacker at the Homeland Security Department; and another DHS employee who indicated he worked on a U.S. counterterrorism response team.
Few actually paid for their services with their government email accounts. But their government Internet connections — logged by the website over five years — and their credit-card transactions were reviewed to identify them. They included workers at more than two dozen Obama administration agencies, including the departments of State, Defense, Justice, Energy, Treasury, Transportation and Homeland Security. Others came from House or Senate computer networks.
The government subscribers are not being named because they are not elected officials or accused of a crime.
Hackers this week released records on millions of people registered with the website one month after the breakin at Ashley Madison’s parent company, Toronto-based Avid Life Media Inc. The website — whose slogan is, “Life is short. Have an affair” — is marketed to facilitate extramarital affairs.
Many federal customers appeared to use nongovernment email addresses with handles such as “sexlessmarriage,” “soontobesingle” or “latinlovers.” Some Justice Department employees appeared to use prepaid credit cards to help preserve their anonymity but connected to the service from their office computers.
“I was doing some things I shouldn’t have been doing,” a Justice Department investigator said. Asked about the threat of blackmail, the investigator said if prompted he would reveal his actions to his family and employer to prevent it. “I’ve worked too hard all my life to be a victim of blackmail. That wouldn’t happen,” he said.
The analysis also found hundreds of transactions associated with Department of Defense networks, either at the Pentagon or from armed services connections elsewhere.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter confirmed the Pentagon was looking into the list of people who used military email addresses. Adultery can be a criminal offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
“I’m aware it,” Carter said. “Of course it’s an issue.”
Federal policies vary for employees by agency as to whether they would be permitted during work hours to use websites like Ashley Madison, which could fall under the same category as dating websites. But it raises questions about what personal business is acceptable — and what websites are OK to visit — for government workers on taxpayer time, especially employees who could face blackmail.