Slashdot Mirror
WoW Gamer Earns Federal Investigation Achievement
barnyjr writes "A teenager could face federal charges after investigators say he made online threats to kill Americans on a plane from Indianapolis to Chicago. According to investigators, a monitor of the online interactive game World of Warcraft saw the alleged threats in an on-line chat and called Johnson County authorities. She told investigators the chatter didn't seem like a game."
I'm not sure who's crazier, this guy or the guy who just became the first World of Warcraft player to rack up 10,000 achievement points.
I think the most amazing part of the story is this:
"According to the report, the teen told investigators he'd heard if you make threats online against a plane, the police would show up at your doorstep. The teen told investigators he was only testing that theory."
Test successful! Big Brother is watching.
The teachers and school administration are actually bullies themselves, and are run by bullies. That's why they never seriously stop bullying (their own progeny!) and always crack down HARD on the bullied.
There was some talk in the news a year or so back about how security services were afraid of terrorists using online chat in games and such to organise.
Who wants a bet the "monitor" was actually another NSA (or similar) program data mining chat logs rather than just someone seeing it on the off chance?
I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories, but if the actions of security services in various countries across the world have taught us anything this last 5 or so years, it's that the measures they'll go to are suprising - from the Russian FSB murdering Litvinenko in London, to the NSA warantless wiretaps program, to the shooting of Menezes on the tube in London and the subsequent "dissapearance" of the CCTV tapes, to the use of torture by the CIA, and now it appears almost certainly MI5 too.
While more often than not I would tend to agree with your point of view, it should be considered just how far this attitude can be carried.
Would this idea of government non-interference extend to a scenario where someone heard a scream from a neighboring apartment and called a police on an off-chance that there might be a murder in progress and not a TV show? Would it go so far as to extend to a situation in a bar where someone is screaming in your face that they're gonna kick your ass all the way down to Antarctica and you would say: "well nothing to do here since the bar doesn't have a security guard"?
Don't tell me that if you go to a bar you don't have a right to expect to be safe. With some exceptions, I believe that most of the bar owners would say that they count on you to feel safe in their establishment.
I do agree that there are places and situations where the government doesn't have it's place, but security isn't one of them.
If anything I would prefer to have most of the private security firms replaced by real police with real training, responsibility and accountability. I know that this statement sounds naive but a lot of security companies are simply a collaboration of thugs, looking for an excuse to beat someone up if they're having a bad day/night at work.