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You can strike terrorist trolls off your list of things to be afraid of.
The National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency have secretly infiltrated the virtual worlds of online multi-player games like World of Warcraft and Second Life, where they use avatars to recruit informants and seek out potential threats, according to a new report. Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden describe the potential of an online game to “become a target-rich communication network” where threat “targets hide in plain sight,” ProPublica, the Guardian and the New York Times report in a joint investigation.
According to one document, in 2008 the British intelligence agency GCHQ helped bring down a crime ring selling stolen credit card information in a virtual world. Another GCHQ document describes the potential to recruit engineers, embassy drivers, scientists, and other foreign intelligence operatives by meeting their avatars in virtual worlds. An NSA document said spying on the World of Warcraft “continues to uncover potential Sigint value by identifying accounts, characters and guilds related to Islamic extremist groups, nuclear proliferation and arms dealing.”
NSA Leaks: Edward Snowden Docs Reveal Spying on World of Warcraft | TIME.com
To the National Security Agency analyst writing a briefing to his superiors, the situation was clear: their current surveillance efforts were lacking something. The agency's impressive arsenal of cable taps and sophisticated hacking attacks was not enough. What it really needed was a horde of undercover Orcs.
That vision of spycraft sparked a concerted drive by the NSA and its UK sister agency GCHQ to infiltrate the massive communities playing online games, according to secret documents disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The files were obtained by the Guardian and are being published on Monday in partnership with the New York Times and ProPublica.
The agencies, the documents show, have built mass-collection capabilities against the Xbox Live console network, which has more than 48 million players. Real-life agents have been deployed into virtual realms, from those Orc hordes in World of Warcraft to the human avatars of Second Life. There were attempts, too, to recruit potential informants from the games' tech-friendly users.
Online gaming is big business, attracting tens of millions of users worldwide who inhabit their digital worlds as make-believe characters, living and competing with the avatars of other players. What the intelligence agencies feared, however, was that among these clans of elves and goblins, terrorists were lurking.
Xbox Live among game services targeted by US and UK spy agencies | World news | The Guardian
Not limiting their activities to the earthly realm, American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life, conducting surveillance and scooping up data in the online games played by millions of people across the globe, according to newly disclosed classified documents.
Fearing that terrorist or criminal networks could use the games to communicate secretly, move money or plot attacks, the documents show, intelligence operatives have entered terrain populated by digital avatars that include elves, gnomes and supermodels.
The spies have created make-believe characters to snoop and to try to recruit informers, while also collecting data and contents of communications between players, according to the documents, disclosed by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/w...of-elves-and-trolls.html?_r=1&&pagewanted=all
http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/889128/games.pdf
Is there anything spy agencies aren't involved in? I gotta admit though, if I were a spook, I'd love to draw that straw. "Okay Jango, from today until this project is cancelled, you will play video games your entire shift."