Maybe I’m just an old perv, but if I had access to Holodeck technology, you know damn well I’d be getting myself some Victoria’s Secret supermodel action, or my latest celebrity crush, or even real people I knew who were inaccessible for whatever reason. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it too.
While the question may seem juvenile, there are practical aspects as well. Letting your young Starfleet officers and enlistees blow off some hormonal steam on the Holodeck could help keep them out of trouble in various shore-leave situations or cut down on unwanted fraternization. It’s relatively harmless, after all – it would just be elaborate masturbation, really, and there are probably no regulations against that.
They strongly hinted it was not prohibited, even if it wasn’t explicitly stated.
In TNG in particular, Lt Barclay was known to enjoy elaborate holodeck fantasies instead of enjoying the company of other people (and why the rest of his “enlightened” 24th century crewmates would judge him poorly for this instead of letting him be or getting him help is a matter for another thread). I might be remembering it incorrectly, but Riker might also have had at least one similar program.
In DS9, Quark explicitly ran a holo-brothel, though as that was a private enterprise, it wouldn’t necessarily be covered under Starfleet regs.
In this epsiode, Lt. Barclay creates at least one holosimulation containing fellow crew members. Riker states that “crewmembers should not be simulated on the holodeck as a matter of protocol”.
Edit: This episode seems to imply that Barclay may have been doing this for some time. If so, then the holodeck computer is not programmed to monitor for these protocol violations. There are several episodes where we see folks just walk right in on someone elses simulation without knocking first, so I don’t know if there are any “expectations of privacy” protocols.
In “The Perfect Mate” (IIRC) after Kamala flirts with Riker he stalks off saying “Riker to bridge: if you need me, I’ll be in holodeck 4.” I think there’s a fairly obvious implication that he’s not going there to solve a murder mystery in period costume.
For that matter, a locked room inside the artificial setting should work, depending on what the protocols are for someone to modify someone else’s running program.
By pretty much the same reasoning, there’s no lock on the communicator system or turbo-lifts. Anybody who asks can find out where anybody is, then take a turbo-lift to see them, even if they’re on the bridge, and you’re not in Star Fleet. Everything is on the honor system.
