Hundreds of US government employees were found to have been using computers in their federal offices to access Ashley Madison, a website which promotes extra-marital affairs.
The discovery was made following the hacking of the Ashley Madison website and the subsequent public disclosure of detailed records of the adultery website's millions of registered users worldwide.
US government employees who were found to be patronising Ashley Madison included those in high federal positions and sensitive posts, such as at least two assistant US attorneys, at least three employees from the US Justice Department, an information technology administrator working in the Executive Office of the President, an employee from the Department of Homeland Security who once worked in a counterterrorism response team, and a government hacker from the Homeland Security Department.
Worse, some federal employees used Internet connections in their offices to access the controversial cheating website. These government employees work in executive agencies, such as the Departments of State, Defense, Justice, Energy, Treasury, Transportation and Homeland Security.
That's not all: Even employees at the House of Representatives and Senate also used official computer networks to log in to Ashley Madison.
Nevertheless, most of these federal workers did not use their official government e-mail addresses to pay for services in the adultery website. They also did not use their official email addresses to register, and instead used suggestive accounts such as "sexlessmarriage," "soontobesingle" or "latinlovers."
One of these government employees found to have used Ashley Madison, who was not identified in reports, admitted to patronising the site.
"I was doing some things I shouldn't have been doing," a Justice Department investigator admitted.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, meanwhile, said the Pentagon was already looking into the list of people who used military email addresses to access Ashley Madison.
Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, adultery can be considered a criminal offense.
"Of course it's an issue because conduct is very important. And we expect good conduct on the part of our people. ... The services are looking into it and as well they should be. Absolutely," Carter said.
