FBI Employees Download Pirated Movies and TV Shows | Hacker News Reader

FBI Employees Download Pirated Movies and TV Shows

torrentfreak.com

61 pointsfraqed26 comments

Of course they do. What exactly is the point of this? The organization is against piracy (as are many many private individuals), but as they say an organization is made of people...

Is the point to prove hypocrisy? As if we needed any further proof that people and governments are hypocritical. It doesn't change anything and it doesn't make downloading content any more legal or morally right. Seems like a waste of time and attention.

Breaking news, some FBI employees also speed on the highway.

> Is the point to prove hypocrisy? As if we needed any further proof that people and governments are hypocritical.

I guess the point is when will somebody with authority do something about this? When will police start arresting FBI agents? It seems like we're all just okay with these federal agents being above the law they've sworn to protect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

And now we know the origins of 'no u'

It may not invalidate the claim that piracy is wrong. But it certainly calls into question their suitability to enforce anti-piracy laws.

As to orofino's claim that it doesn't make piracy any more morally right, I disagree. It is one more piece of evidence that piracy is so widespread that it is morally correct - when people in basically every organization in the world break the law on a regular basis, it means the law itself needs to be reevaluated.

To use his own example, the same can be said for speed limits which are generally supposed to be set to the 85th percentile. If a speed limit is set too low - as shown by more than 15 percent of drivers exceeding it - then the limit itself needs to be corrected.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that something being widespread makes it morally correct. Maybe it makes the law unworkable, but morals are generally a personal choice.

Laws are fundamentally codifications of human nature. So a law that goes against the majority of people's natural inclinations (or to use your term, personal choices) is by definition immoral.

What this proves is that the law is so absurd that not even the enforcement officials are willing to comply. Ever heard of the prohibition? There were "corrupt policemen" which bought and sold spirits! Same here. This is why it is relevant: not hypocrisy but lack of common sense in the law.

On the other hand it seems that they are using a public service for their private pleasure. I do see a problem here.

Of course they do my ass. To most people it is not obvious so it is a good thing that they are being called out on it. You acting as if everybody already knows does not help. But of course you know this.

Of course it's to prove hypocrisy. Do you really want laws and enforcement of laws to only apply to "regular" people?

If we show them how idiotic it is to have laws that put people in jail for copying songs or charge them millions of dollars, when even the people that are supposed to uphold these laws are doing it, maybe they'll come to their senses.

How exactly is it morally wrong?

So it's OK, because FBI employees also speed and jaywalk?

Piracy is an Extremely Serious crime that only evil hackers would do. I know this because, the enormous financial penalties and occasional jail time to those downloading a handful of songs.

So please, put our equivocation away, and treat FBI employees who pirate the same we treat the general population.

What systems should these organizations be most capable of monitoring? This behavior is bad -- felonies and many, many thousands of dollars in fines bad, per their own definition.

So... why aren't they investigating and prosecuting these instances? Here's the lowest hanging fruit!

Yes. Hypocrisy. Justice is blind for a reason, in its statuary portrayal. Without equality under the law... Well, you don't have law as we tend to at least want to popularly define it in the U.S.

P.S. And, if they can't even effectively police their own networks, why should I have any trust that they -- or their agents and partners -- will effectively and correctly police the nation's? Such organizations can and do rot from the top down, and this is something to fear.

Does anyone feels that what we are trying to achieve in case of piracy (stopping it) is probably the wrong way to handle it?

Obviously everyone is doing it even the people responsible for stopping it. That looks more like natural evolution everyone's trying to stop.

The surprising thing is that they were doing this at work. Really, FBI?

The FBI is huge and has its share of poorly paid twenty-something interns. It's not that surprising.

But it's probably: 1) against FBI employee policy and 2) easy to spot for network admins.

Doing it at work is surprising because it's something that is easy to catch and terminate the employee.

The surprising thing is that you're surprised. Less than three years ago we learned that some well-paid members of the SEC were using substantial time and resources at work to view, download, and store porn from the internet. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/23/sec-porn-probe-staf... and I quote, "A senior attorney at the SEC's Washington headquarters spent up to eight hours a day looking at and downloading pornography. When he ran out of hard drive space, he burned the files to CDs or DVDs, which he kept in boxes around his office."

I've witnessed situations like the attorney there and more.

Spending 8 hours a day browsing porn for weeks at a time. Printing 3x5 foot pictures of the worst stuff you can imagine. Openly discussing all sorts of incriminating stuff via email or SMS on company phones. Assuming that somebody actually has to watch all the security cameras when they're actually streaming x264 to a server with months of capacity.

It must be dangerously easy to think yourself invincible once you get away with something a few times.

Unless they were gathering evidence. It's illegal to buy drugs, but sometimes cops do it as part of an investigation.

I know people can be stupid, but doing it from the FBI's network without their permission seems especially stupid.

It just seems easier to believe the former than the latter.

There are a few different plausible explanations for this, and there is no evidence for or against any of them.

I'd be more surprised if they weren't downloading. Spend enough time monitoring / maintaining any large network and you will see everything, regardless of the perceived seriousness of the organization.

"With help from BitTorrent monitoring company ScanEye" <- How does that work? Do they simply collect IPs from peers and seed of each file and dump them all into their own database? And they have a business around it? That sounds rather creepy. But I guess it's good to know there are people doing this at least.

Yes, basically that. Companies have been doing this for years.

This is why many torrent clients have blocklists built in, though how helpful they actually are is dubious.

I hope they're downloading "Home and Away" with a view to prosecuting the makers! (It's an absolutely dire Australian soap opera).

But more seriously, an Aussie expat (can they work for the FBI?) is probably missing the show and, as in so many similar circumstances, has no legal method for paying to watch so ends up torrenting.

(also, water is wet? who knew?)

As an Aussie I can assure you that, like nobody drinks Fosters here, nobody watches Home & Away either. ;)

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