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News website TorrentFreak has uncovered what could be an piracy download epidemic right within the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division.
Using publicly available data from ScanEye, dozens of BitTorrent downloads, from hit TV shows such as Homeland, to movies such as The Girl Who Played With Fire, were found to have been downloaded from computers operating on the FBI CJIS's allocated IP addresses.
And there's at least one Aussie soap fan among the people who work there, as episodes of the popular show Home and Away were downloaded too.
The agency, whose anti-piracy message adorns DVDs and Blu-ray movies sold in the US, appears to lack the will or the ability to control the BitTorrent habits of its own employees, even as it's been tasked by the federal government to crackdown on websites offering links to BitTorrent files.
The FBI is not alone in breaking their own rules though, as in the past, employees at Hollywood studios, anti-piracy agencies, congressional offices and even the Department of Justice, have all been "caught".
But the possibility remains that these downloads may have formed part of a criminal investigation, rather than recreational activities - an unlikely scenario - or that that IP address spoofing may have occurred to allow others to pretend to be the FBI, and mask their own IP addresses.
Using publicly available data from ScanEye, dozens of BitTorrent downloads, from hit TV shows such as Homeland, to movies such as The Girl Who Played With Fire, were found to have been downloaded from computers operating on the FBI CJIS's allocated IP addresses.
And there's at least one Aussie soap fan among the people who work there, as episodes of the popular show Home and Away were downloaded too.
The agency, whose anti-piracy message adorns DVDs and Blu-ray movies sold in the US, appears to lack the will or the ability to control the BitTorrent habits of its own employees, even as it's been tasked by the federal government to crackdown on websites offering links to BitTorrent files.
The FBI is not alone in breaking their own rules though, as in the past, employees at Hollywood studios, anti-piracy agencies, congressional offices and even the Department of Justice, have all been "caught".
But the possibility remains that these downloads may have formed part of a criminal investigation, rather than recreational activities - an unlikely scenario - or that that IP address spoofing may have occurred to allow others to pretend to be the FBI, and mask their own IP addresses.