Whistleblower Edward Snowden has provided documents to The Guardian revealing that the NSA and UK sister agency GCHQ have undercover agents lurking on the Xbox Live network, World of Warcraft, Second Life and other virtual realms. Why? Because online gaming is big business, and it's possible that terrorists are lurking within those virtual realms, scheming. Infiltrating MMORPGs and other game networks is also a good way to recruit potential informants.
The report — originally penned in 2008 — explains that these digital realms are “target-rich communications networks” where bad-doers could “hide in plain sight”. The Guardian also explains how there “were attempts, too, to recruit potential informants from the games’ tech-friendly users.” Why such a rich seam? The Guardian explains:
''If properly exploited, games could produce vast amounts of intelligence, according to the the NSA document. They could be used as a window for hacking attacks, to build pictures of people’s social networks through “buddylists and interaction”, to make approaches by undercover agents, and to obtain target identifiers (such as profile photos), geolocation, and collection of communications.
The ability to extract communications from talk channels in games would be necessary, the NSA paper argued, because of the potential for them to be used to communicate anonymously: Second Life was enabling anonymous texts and planning to introduce voice calls, while game noticeboards could, it states, be used to share information on the web addresses of terrorism forums.''
The operations raise concerns about the privacy of gamers. It is unclear how the agencies accessed their data, or how many communications were collected. Nor is it clear how the NSA ensured that it was not monitoring innocent Americans whose identity and nationality may have been concealed behind their virtual avatar.
http://mashable.com/2013/12/09/nsa-gchq-world-of-warcraft-games/
NSA Has Secret Agents Planted Inside World of Warcraft?
The California-based producer of World of Warcraft said neither the NSA nor GCHQ had sought its permission to gather intelligence inside the game. "We are unaware of any surveillance taking place," said a spokesman for Blizzard Entertainment. "If it was, it would have been done without our knowledge or permission."
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