But Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation said a government wide ban on P2P use would have dubious benefit. "I'm sure there are at least as many leaks that occur thanks to unwise uses of e-mail and Web browsers," compared with P2P use, he said.

A ban specifically on P2P use would not go far enough in tackling leaks stemming from e-mail, browsers and other sources, von Lohmann said. At the same time, it could also have the effect of banning the use of potentially useful P2P tools within government enterprises, he said.

He pointed to the increasing use of BitTorrent and other P2P architectures by video game companies and licensed music services such as Spotify as examples where the technology can play a very useful role. "So it could be very difficult to ban only the "bad" software without also banning the "good" software," von Lohmann said.

"It would be an unfortunate outcome if, 10 years from now, the US government were unable to take advantage of new, cost-saving software products because of an antiquated P2P software ban enacted today."

This is the second time in the last two years -- and the third time overall -- that House oversight committee has held a hearing on the data leak risks associated with the use of P2P file-sharing software. If Towns does introduce a bill seeking to ban P2P, it would become the second piece of legislation introduced recently to deal with concerns stemming from inadvertent data leaks on file-sharing networks.