It still weighs heavily on Bryan's mind, what he found on that executive's computer, especially when he thinks of his own daughters. He's particularly troubled that the man he discovered using a company computer to view pornography of Asian women and of children was subsequently promoted and moved to China to run a manufacturing plant.

"To this day, I regret not taking that stuff to the FBI," says Bryan.

It happened six years ago, when Bryan, who asked that his last name not be published, was IT director for the U.S. division of a $500 million multinational corporation based in Germany.

The company's Internet usage policy, which Bryan helped develop with input from senior management, specifically prohibited the use of company computers to access pornographic or adult-content Web sites. One of Bryan's duties was to monitor employee Web surfing using SurfControl and report any violations to management.

Bryan knew that the executive, who was a level above him in another department, was popular both within the U.S. division and the German parent. So when SurfControl turned up dozens of pornographic Web sites visited by the exec's computer, Bryan figured "my best course of action was to follow the policy."

"That's what it's there for," he reasoned. "I wasn't going to get into trouble for following the policy." He went to his manager with copies of the Web logs in question (which he still has in his possession and made available to Computerworld for verification).

Continue reading the article on ComputerWorld. The article is long and intensive, followed by a strong discussion forum.