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NSA Collect Gamers' Chats and Deploy Real-Life Agents Into WoW and Second Life

Posted by samzenpus on from the for-the-horde dept.

An anonymous reader writes in with news that some NSA agents were trying to dig up info by joining the horde. "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 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."

2 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Well, of course. by i+kan+reed · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But more seriously, that disaffection that MMO players seem to exhibit in spades is one of the characteristics of al qeada era terrorists. Being middle class, disillusioned, Muslim, male, single, and approaching middle age is the basic profile of an ideal recruit to them.

  2. Re:Well, of course. by ememisya · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I am middle-class, disillusioned, Muslim, male, single and approaching middle age. Thankfully I don't play WoW, nor do I facebook, and exactly for these reasons. I got into a fight in highschool for being from Turkey during 9/11 because one kid decided to scream, "Turkey did it!", you know, they're all the same those brown bastards. Now I fear that guy might be employed by the pick-your-3-letter-agency, and no I'm not going to be like Yakov Smirnoff and walk around with a flag pin to show my patriotism, and I hope this insanity will stop before we reach the "burn a number on your skin" stage, I'm hoping even way before, lets round up all the Japanese stage.