The
NYTimes.com,
theguardian.com, and
ProPublica report that the U.S. National Security Agency's spying on
citizens extends to participation in online games. This is according to
documents disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, which say U.S. and British
spies have infiltrated various games in toon form to keep tabs on the goings-on
since at least 2007. They have a specific statement on World of Warcraft: "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." Word is this surveillance extended to Xbox LIVE, but their big
focus seems to be Second Life, and they were apparently so many CIA, FBI and
Pentagon spies caught up in Linden Labs' metaverse a "deconfliction" group was
required to keep them out of each other's virtual hair (we always wondered how
that "game" reported such high user counts). Apparently they fell for some
signature Second Life hype: "Second Life has proven that virtual worlds of
social networking are a reality: come hear Cory tell you why!" Linden Labs solicited
the NSA in an invitation to discuss the game's espionage potential with Linden
CTO (and former Navy officer with NSA contacts) Cory Ondrejka, promising virtual
worlds gave the government the opportunity "to understand the motivation,
context and consequent behaviors of non-Americans through observation, without
leaving U.S. soil." Current Linden Labs execs declined the opportunity to
comment on this, and these days Ondrejka is helping safeguard our privacy at
Facebook. They offer details on another such operation which may have resulted
in a lucrative deal for another contractor to monitor activity within games. And
while the Brits did bust up a credit card crime ring in Second Life, for the
most part, this initiative has been about as productive towards national
security as one might imagine a bunch of spooks playing MMOGs would
be:
The documents do not cite any counterterrorism successes from the
effort, and former American intelligence officials, current and former gaming
company employees and outside experts said in interviews that they knew of
little evidence that terrorist groups viewed the games as havens to communicate
and plot operations.
Games “are built and operated by companies looking to make money, so the
players’ identity and activity is tracked,” said Peter W. Singer of the
Brookings Institution, an author of “Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone
Needs to Know.” “For terror groups looking to keep their communications secret,
there are far more effective and easier ways to do so than putting on a troll
avatar.”