Forum Post: Spy agencies in covert push to infiltrate virtual world of online gaming
Posted 10 years ago on Dec. 9, 2013, 1:18 p.m. EST by GirlFriday
(17435)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
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. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/09/nsa-spies-online-games-world-warcraft-second-life
And here is the one from ProPublica http://www.propublica.org/article/world-of-spycraft-intelligence-agencies-spied-in-online-games
[Removed]
Sure. You might OR you might just have nothing but a half a dozen entrapment schemes and come up with zilch but will have been able to play video games on the clock. Incidentally, this is totally why I made the statement below on excuses but I do want to acknowledge that it was bloody brilliant to come up with all that in order to play.
If they were worried about a shit load of people sympathetic to terrorist causes then they should have backtracked to the lobbying efforts and petrodollars that the universities snatched up in the 1970's. The more I think about it the more I think this is ultimately what pisses me off.
RPGs have simply solved the problem of having to go to someone's house and play 5 hours of D&D--very, very painful. It isn't that there is a lack of dipshits that are out there. A long time 4Chan user recently attempted suicide, Silk Road is back up, and then there is Tila.
It's the fact that the rest of us have to pay for the fucknuts and the fucknuts never end.
We will now be safe from Orc hoards in perpetuity.
You would think though, that they would be after the militarized MMP's, like Call of Duty, or are they using that for recruitment?
Ya, now that the Orc problem is solved...
My first response was...........I have heard better excuses from my kid.
"Get off the game."
"Moooooom, it's for national security."
"Get off the game or I ground you for the rest of your natural life and every time you spawn."
"Noooo, the entire world is counting on me. You don't understand."
Xbox, eh? This should sell a few Playstations..................:)
Truth is, privacy as we knew it, is long gone, and it's not coming back.
Presumtions and assumptions we make about what they do with all that data tends to blind us to all the things they really could glean from it. Not to mention the possibility of selling it to whoever they want.
Oh, and lets not pretend ye olde internet is particularly "private" either. It was never built for that. Nor were cell phones, for that matter.
BTW, some of those video games are rather engrossing................:)
Some of those games are VERY engrossing. I'm the Skyrim back seat driver as well as Assassins Creed.
The privacy issue ticks me off. But, the kicker is see this: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/09/predatory-tax-lien-buyer-spreading-misery-across-us-but-whos-behind-it/
those would be the terrorists. I don't think they are going to be gamers.
Good old cold call threats.
I received one from Valentine & Kebartas, telling me they were collecting for my dental clinic. They didn't know that I had just been there the previous week and paid my bill, so I told him that, but it didn't so much as slow him down.
I told him, look, I'll call them right now and see what they say. Then I hung up on him and called the clinic and told them my story. She checked and even called in her office manager to double check. It turned out they actually owed me a few bucks and they told me not to give out any information to those people. I said I didn't.
I called Valentine & Kebartas back and told them to take me off their list, and if I heard from them again, they'd here from my attorney. Not that I actually have one, but they don't know that either.
I never heard from them again.......................:)
You can look them up, they don't rate well at the BBB.
Now, see.my ex inlaws received a phone call from a collection agency that said there was a warrant out for their arrest and they were coming with the sheriff's department in 24 hours unless they made a call. They didn't owe any money but it was a scare tactic. These people are elderly. A bunch of dirtbags. I looked up their number on line and found they had played the same game with other people.
[Removed]