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FBI employees downloading 'Home and Away' from work

The FBI might hate pirates, but it turns out that they don't mind a few pirated shows, including Australia's own Home and Away.

Nic Healey Senior Editor / Australia
Nic Healey is a Senior Editor with CNET, based in the Australia office. His passions include bourbon, video games and boring strangers with photos of his cat.
Nic Healey

The FBI might hate pirates, but it turns out that they don't mind a few pirated shows, including Australia's own Home and Away.

(Credit: Channel Seven)

Over at TorrentFreak, some clever use of a program called ScanEye has revealed a number of torrents being shared from IP addresses belonging to the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division.

Homeland, Dexter and The Good Wife all make an appearance, but so, bizarrely, does episode 18 of season 25 of Home and Away.

Of course, this doesn't mean that these shows are being downloaded for personal use. It's still possible that these are part of data-gathering schemes or even honey pots to track other sharers.

However, as TorrentFreak pointed out, if these are personal torrents, then the behaviour is hardly unique, with the same situation having been previously seen in the Department of Justice, the parliament and even movie studios themselves.

We'd go a little farther and note that if you were looking for information on pirates, then maybe something other than episodes of the now cancelled Boss and an Aussie soap opera might be a little more useful.