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Intellectually, you know better than to do something stupid like surf for porn while at work. Just the same, some people do it like the dozens of NSA, DARPA, DoD, and other Pentagon officials who possess security clearances, but allegedly purchased and downloaded child pornography over the Internet.


According to a report in The Boston Globe, the porn downloaders represent a “small percentage” of the Pentagon’s massive staff. It is however concerning since it puts the Pentagon “at risk of blackmail, bribery, and threats, especially since these individuals typically have access to military installations.’’

The knowing possession of child pornography is a federal felony. Accessing or purchasing porn on a government computer is beyond stupid as well as a misuse of government property. Some of the porn downloading was done by people who deal with the most sensitive intelligence and defense work. Two of the cases were contractors with top NSA secret clearances; their work involves eavesdropping on foreign communications. One of those contractors was indicted two years ago and fled the country. He’s believed to be hiding in Libya.

Our behavior online is now a primary focus of researchers. One group of researchers believes that, our online behavior is no different to evolutionary behavior, as explained by evolutionary psychology.

Internet behavior is one of the most researched fields in the recent times. However most of the studies have based their research on traditional psychology models, which are good in determining the proximal causes of our online behavior. Researchers from UK are now proposing that our internet behavior is modeled upon evolutionary psychology and suggesting that, such a model would help learn the distal causes of our internet behavior.

Despite the major differences between face to face communication and computer mediated communication, there exist a lot of similarities. To further their claim and motivate fellow researchers, the researchers have made some interesting similarities between typical online behaviors and evolutionary psychology theories. Given below are few of those observations/suggestions. Further research into each of the following, would help us learn, whether we are following our evolutionary psychological behavior, online as well.