Illegal downloads found on US Congress computers

A report by IP address tracker ScanEye has suggested that US Congress employees have illegally downloaded movies and TV programmes on work computers.

Since October last year, employees have used congressional computers to download pirated content including teen survival film The Hunger Games, UK talk show Alan Carr: Chatty Man, and Australian soap opera Home and Away.

ScanEye is an anti-piracy service that monitors download activity for IP addresses around the world. It shared the report with the US News and World Report’s Whispers blog.

Not every IP address in Congress could be tracked, so there could be an even higher number of illegal downloads than the report found.

Despite Congress's past efforts to crack down on Internet piracy, including the ill-fated Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa), there has been no reduction in the number of illegal downloads to congressional computers since the first was recorded in October of last year.

In December 2011 the blog TorrentFreak reported similar activity by Congress employees during Sopa's drafting.