Can feds be fired for adultery? The government is combing through thousands of e-mail addresses that turned up in the Ashley Madison leak

The Washington Post reports:

Now that the Ashley Madison hack has outed as many as 15,000 federal employees and active duty military, government agencies say they’re combing through the e-mail addresses of possible adulterers to see if their extramarital activity on work time amounts to anything punishable.

The rules of the game for morality in federal offices may be straightforward for pornography (watching it can definitely get you fired) — but the kind of skeleton in the closet that showed up in the trove of 36 million users exposed on the cheating Web site presents officials with a murkier problem, experts say.

The rules vary on the kind of personal use of work computers that’s allowed on government time. Mostly, they’re more restrictive than a private company’s. It’s okay to make a doctor’s appointment, call the babysitter, tell your spouse you’ll be home late. It’s okay to check on your investments during the stock market’s current nosedive. These are technically called “private use” exceptions to authorized uses of government property.

Ouch.