Posted on 12/10/2013 7:39:44 AM PST by Behind Liberal Lines
Giving a new twist to the term "spy games," U.S. and British intelligence agents have infiltrated the World of Warcraft and Second Life online fantasy games in their search for terrorists and criminal networks.
The spy agencies "have built mass-collection capabilities against the Xbox Live console network, which has more than 48 million players," James Ball reported in The Guardian. He based his account on classified papers leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, whose release of masses of documents detailing U.S. communications surveillance has made him a finalist for Time's Person of the Year.
Spies took on fantasy roles, snooped around the games, looked for potential snitches and collected information and communications between players, said The New York Times in an article jointly produced with ProPublica, publications with which The Guardian shared the documents.
The effort grew out of fear that terrorists, already prone to using fake identities and voice and text chats, could use the games to pass secrets, move money and plan attacks while hiding "in plain sight," an NSA document from 2008 indicates. The Times said another document from from the same year declared virtual games "an opportunity!"
The U.S. spy community got busy playing games -- so busy, in fact, that a "deconfliction group" had to be set up to avoid collisions among the avatars of NSA, FBI and Pentagon spies prowling Second Life.
(Excerpt) Read more at syracuse.com ...
Snowmen is doing us all a great service—too bad you are too thick to see that.
“What if, in addition to trying to thwart terrorists and criminals, the Regime is using this information to find and develop potential mass shooters like the one who perpetrated the Newtown massacre?” —Libstripper
I think that is exactly what they are doing:
7-22-11 Oslo/Utoya Island slaughter, Norway 69 dead
[url]http://www.dagbladet.no/2...LyxXT68T0uD1bfCte52pRbDw[/url]
Brevik has questioned said that he spent much time in the game [b]World of Warcraft[/b]... 32-year-old has previously explained his movements on Utøya as if he were in a violent computer game. Seven years ago he took a year off to concentrate on the game at full time.
12-8-11 Virginia Tech Shooting, Blacksburg, VA Ross Truett Ashley, 22 2 dead
[url]http://blogs.fredericksbu...sdesk/2011/12/13/ashley-‘a-different-person’/[/url]
He(ex-roommate) said Ashley enjoyed NFL games and the popular fantasy game “[b]World of Warcraft[/b].”
7-20-12 Batman Shooting, Aurora, CO 12 dead
[url]http://www.dailymail.co.u...tml?ICO=most_read_module[/url]
A former classmate from the University of Colorado suggested another cause for the killings, describing Holmes as someone who had lost touch with reality after becoming ‘obsessed’ with video games.
‘I can’t remember which one but it was something like [b]World of Warcraft[/b], one of those where you compete against people on the internet.
‘He did not have much of a life apart from that and doing his work. James seemed like he wanted to be in the game and be one of the characters.
3-19-13 University of Central Florida, James Oliver Seevakumaran 1 dead
[url]https://www.dropbox.com/sh/e0t9nr8rtxwy6qt/PIlbDSKMDZ?n=178434595[/url]
RoommateStatements.pdf
pg 7 of 7 by Samuel Consgrove, Jr.
“He played video games in his room without leaving on weekdays, including “[b]World of Warcraft[/b]” and other online games, during this period.”
Maybe that was the “opportunity” they were talking about:
from the origonal link:
“NSA document from 2008: The Times said another document from from the same year declared virtual games “an opportunity!” “
/
oh ffs already, now our taxes are going to pay fat lazy gubmint spies to play video games all day long. I’m gonna quit paying taxes, fek em
Good. The government spooks need to keep sweating.
This argument asserts that the government should be allowed to carry out an agenda any way they like, or else pick up their marbles, go home, and leave the work undone. By this reasoning, if you object to Obamacare then you have no right to complain if the government shuts down its disease-tracking programs and allows new plagues to spread unchecked.
This is, to be blunt, absurd. The government's claim that it needs additional powers is based on its assertion that it cannot do the job with its traditional powers. Obviously, the question of whether they are making an honest and competent effort to do the job within their traditional powers bears on the validity of this argument.
If someone came to your charity asking for help, would it be "quite irrelevant" to your evaluation whether he stretches what money he has as far as it will go, or whether he spends everything he has on booze and lottery tickets?
I don’t recall saying anywhere that I want the government to be allowed to gather data indiscriminately. I merely pointed out that this is the more or less indisputable prerequisite of an effective counter-intelligence operation.
Indiscriminate data gathering is the very opposite of effective counter-intelligence. It leads agencies down blind alleys (at best) or into abusive politicization (at worst) rather than to effective action against threats. This is why, for example, the Feds blew off specific warnings about the Boston Marathon bomber -- the signal got lost in the noise.
You will note that the “smoking guns” trotted out after 9/11 were pretty much all gossip and other non-criminal activities.
I note no such thing. The smoking guns were clear red flags (e.g. "hey, this guy wants to learn to fly a plane but doesn't care about how to land it") that were reported but not acted upon because even then the Feds were wasting too much time playing Pokemon gotta-catch-em-all games with the private business of honest citizens.
Those loudest in denunciation of the government for its intelligence-gathering efforts will also be among its loudest critics the next time those efforts fail to prevent another major attack.
Damn right I'm going to denounce them if they continue gathering up more and more irrelevant data about law-abiding citizens and losing track of actual threats as a result.
The police state has the added bonus of making it easy to crack a few heads when American citizens complain about having their wages shrunk by competition with illegal aliens.
Do get tired of repeating myself to the deaf.
Counter-intelligence in an era of terrorism consists of separating out the one in ten thousand marbles that poses a real threat. To do so by definition one has to look at all the marbles.
Once a marble has been identified as a threat, it pretty much ceases to be one. We can monitor and track it, and prevent it from harming anybody, usually.
This is an example of the fallacy of "Demon Theory #16".
Theory: If you say "abracadabra", knock on wood 16 times, and say "abracadabra" again, a demon will appear and grant you three wishes.
Didn't work? Oh, well. Try Demon Theory #17. If that doesn't work, maybe Demon Theory #18 will...
The point of this thought experiment is to demonstrate the inanity of blindly scooping up all possible data rather than formulating a plan of rational investigation and targeting one's research accordingly.
Notice we don’t seem to ever get other country’s spooks revealed, always ours. Maybe because we have some stupid enough to applaud such dangerous outcomes that work against our interests.
I don’t mind that he mentioned certain programs, but once he kept going and possibly making our national security more dangerous I had less problems with him showing up dead.
Just my opinion...
He can do us the best service at this point by killing himself after destroying the national security data.
98% of classified documents are classified to hide that info from the American people, not any alleged enemy, who probably have a very good idea of what US alphabet agencies are doing.
That is why we have all these OTHER nations horrified by what was released?
Go peddle those papers elsewhere where the gullible will believe you.
The jerk released lots of sensitive information we did not need to get out there. I hope he burns it all and then kills himself in shame.
Not enough "9"s in that figure.
Name three examples.
Polish up those jackboots. Your SS uniform is looking a bit shabby.
??? Traditional Islam, and thus Islamists of all pedigrees, consider 'artistic' depiction of the human (or semi-human) form, to be "haram", or forbidden. The idea of AQ types, or any other Islamist group playing a game such as World of Warcraft is a contradiction (but I suppose possible, in the long run.)
the infowarrior
Yup. When the yard boss be looking for replacements for the malcontents, good to know he can just call the po-lice and have them crack a few heads should the malcontents have the nerve to protest.
These people don’t actually believe in Islam any more than they believe in Santa Claus — for instance, the 9-11 hijackers spent their last day on earth drinking and patronizing strip joints.
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