Porn Cache at Lawrence Livermore (1994)
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We join with those who mourn the loss of life, the injuries, and the disruption of lives caused by the attacks against Washington, DC, and New York, N.Y. All those effected -- the brave people who helped in rescue efforts, those involved in America's response to terror and in the war with Iraq-- are in our thoughts and prayers.
The Aerospace Corporation
Vandenberg AFB, CA
Do you really know what files are on your company’s computer network?
The systems administrators at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory southeast of San Francisco thought they did. However, a Los Angeles Times reporter discovered a collection of 90,000 pornographic images available for downloading via the Internet!
William Allen Danforth, a technician in the Lab’s Computer Applications Science & Engineering Division, resigned after the cache was discovered. He was quickly charged with felony theft of computer services by the Alameda County District Attorney. Michael William Lazzarini, a computer technologist who worked with Danforth, was charged with “infractions” (comparable to traffic tickets) related to Danforth’s activities.
Up to 50 gigabytes of sexually explicit images were stored on the computers of the nuclear weapons laboratory. (For comparison purposes, I have a 340 megabyte hard drive on my home computer. The images would fill that disk drive to capacity 147 times!) Although man overwhelming majority of the images were of adults, a few involved children. Thus, Danforth may also face child pornography charges.
Danforth probably would not have been prosecuted for theft of services if he had used a private computer. However, the Livermore Lab computer is taxpayer owned. The number of collaborators inside and outside the lab who were involved in obtaining and trading the images is not known. Early estimates put the figure at 20.
If Danforth is convicted, the maximum sentence is three years in state prison and a $10,00 fine on each of two felony counts.
[Webmaster's note: This article was originally written in September 1994 for the VSAC News. Not surprisingly, the author now has a much larger hard drive on his home and work computers.]