The US Department of Energy (DOE) fired an employee who had a lot of pornographic pictures on his work laptop. He will never be able to get his security clearance back. In March 2023, network alerts went off when a big, strange backup tried to upload to the protected government network. This led to the internal investigation.
The employee, who had a security clearance that let him see critical items including nuclear secrets, lost his access right away. In 2024, an Administrative Judge said that his permission to access the network “should not be restored.”
Claim of AI Use and Problems with Mental Health
The worker gave a one-of-a-kind reason for what he did. He said he had been collecting the pictures for 30 years and planned to use them to train an AI image generator.
The DOE report on the incident says that the individual said he was depressed and started “playing” with the AI tools during one of his “depressive episodes” to deal with “extreme isolation and loneliness.” The investigation also said that the worker looked at “robot pornography” at this time.
Diagnosis and Decision-Making for Mental Health
After the incident, the person saw a psychologist who worked for the DOE. The psychologist said that the person was having a significant depressive episode that was moderate to severe. The psychologist said that the symptoms of this incident had “compromised his judgment, trustworthiness, and ability to comply with rules and policies.”
During the hearing, the employee showed paperwork to back up his claims of mental illness and said that changing his prescription would “stop him from having the same symptoms in the future.” He also did everything to make sure that his personal files would never be stored on the DOE network again.
The DOE Psychologist, on the other hand, was still cautious and said that the employee’s chances of avoiding another mental health episode that could affect his judgment and dependability were only “fair.” In the end, the judge said that the person “did not bring forth sufficient evidence to mitigate the security concerns presented by his misuse of information technology,” which confirmed that his clearance would be permanently revoked.