TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Web Porn Report Incenses Fire Crew

ADVERTISEMENT

By VALERIE KALFRIN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 27, 2008

Updated: 09/27/2008 01:11 am

TAMPA - Hillsborough County Fire Rescue Capt. Todd Burchardt remembers hopping on the Internet months ago during a break in calls at a fire station in Westchase. He visited the Web page of Badcock Home Furnishings and read news stories about U.S. sprinter Tyson Gay, who set a record at the Olympic trials.

This month, Burchardt found himself explaining his Web usage to family and Little League colleagues after his name was published in the results of a county computer review. County officials, acting on a tip, asked Information Technology director Roger Dean if he could discern whether firefighters were looking at pornography. Dean said he searched caches of the agency's computers for picture files containing profanity or terms such as "fun," "gay," "sex" and "women." The inquiry was made public after a records request.

"I didn't do anything wrong," said Burchardt, who complained to the firefighters union about how the review was conducted and how the report was portrayed. "It really strained my marriage."

On Friday, firefighters union President George Sucarichi wrote a letter to County Administrator Pat Bean asking for a thorough investigation into the "flawed report" and questioning why it was released when Dean cited its inaccuracies beforehand.

"The subject of pornography is a lightning rod for shame and humiliation," Sucarichi wrote. "The county's lack of due diligence in this regard has unjustly snared scores of ... personnel in a very public scandalous affair."

Dean's research included a list of nearly 3,000 file names and the users who were logged on when the file names were captured in the computers' caches. The county released the list to WTSP, Channel 10, reporter Mike Deeson, who requested it after finding a Sept. 8 memo from Fire Chief Bill Nesmith chastising all personnel for "inappropriate materials and unauthorized Web sites."

The TV station posted the list on its Web site Tuesday accompanying a story about "firefighters busted looking at porn." The majority are movie trailers from "Sex and the City" and "Hancock," mutual-fund sites and photographs from the Sun 'n Fun Fly-In in Lakeland. The list also includes almost 300 file names with titles such as i_love_lesbians and euro-sex-parties.

On Wednesday, the station removed the list and ran a follow-up story after hearing Sucarichi's concerns and after interviewing Dean about his methodology.

Reached late Friday, Bean said she hadn't read Sucarichi's letter. However, she and Assistant County Administrator Carl Harness said they never stated that the inquiry's results contained pornography, only Web sites that were inappropriate because they were not work-related.

Asked about some of the specific file names, Bean said, "It doesn't mean that's pornography. I don't know what's in there."

They say Deeson labeled the results improperly. Deeson said some of the file names should raise eyebrows. "I'm not saying the county didn't do it correctly," Deeson said of the review, "but if they didn't, the public certainly has a right to know."

Bean said she received a tip that firefighters were viewing pornography on duty and asked Harness and Dean to look into it. The county has screening software to block pornography, but such material could enter its computers through private e-mail.

Without a specific focus, Harness and Dean said they reviewed the names of picture files stored in the caches of the fire agency's computers. That pulled up such volume that Dean said he narrowed the list by searching on possibly inappropriate terms.

"I never said that report's accuracy was anything close to 100 percent," Dean said. "It's a snapshot of what was saved on the computer on a particular date, and the person who was signed on the computer on that date," not the person who viewed the image. Had Bean requested an audit, he said, he would have looked at each file.

Bean said she and Harness decided an audit was time-consuming and costly. They told Nesmith about the review and the files that were not work-related. That spurred Nesmith's memo.

Before the list was released to Deeson, Dean said he outlined the "caveats" of his research in an e-mail Sept. 12 to Mary Helen Farris of the county attorney's office.

Bean and Harness said it would be against public records law to alter the record to omit the user names from Dean's research. Deeson also said he was uncomfortable with altering the file.

"The whole thing was completely inflammatory," said Capt. Doug Shirley, a fire department chaplain who said he didn't look at the Sun 'n Fun Fly-In pictures attributed to him. "You're lumped in with everybody who did do it. All you can do is say, 'I didn't do this,' and how this can occur, and you're wondering if they think, 'He doth protest too much.'"

Reporter Valerie Kalfrin can be reached at (813) 259-7800 or vkalfrin@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT