How likely is it that the government, or other officials, will track you down through torrent downloads?

Question

How likely is it that the government, or other officials, will track you down through torrent downloads?

Answer 1

What do you mean by "likely"? This is something going on as we speak (or read in our case). I am assuming you are from the US. By law, your ISP must provide transaction logs to government officials when asked. Additional to that, some offices releases fake torrents to catch s*x predators and other criminals. This privacy thing is being a great deal of discussion since some years ago.

If your case is that you use torrents to download movies, video games and other media, I can tell you it'll be hard to catch you (but not impossible). Mostly because the money they'll spend in getting to you will be greater than the loss caused by your downloading. And the companies wanting you to stop can't ask your ISP for your identity (they are not the police) so what will happen is that they will report you to your ISP, and then you will receive a nice and polite warning from your ISP to knock it off. If the case is that you are using the torrents to download child p**n, then you have to be more worried because for the police is easy to get to you once they get your IP address.

Answer 2

slim since downloading copyrighted files is a civil suite rather than a criminal one.  Just remember that distributing is criminal... downloading is civil.  They might (big slim might) come after you if you are uploading the files and/or trying to sell them.

Answer 3

very unlikely