Revealed: spy agencies' covert push to infiltrate virtual world of online games

[EC]

Via the Guardian. I know they have a huge left wing bias, but to their credit they are not letting this scandal just go away.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/09/nsa-spies-online-games-world-warcraft-second-life

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 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 boasts 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 world wide 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 innocent elves and goblins, terrorists were lurking.

More at link.

[Oceander]

Enmeshing themselves in online communities - and hacking the underlying systems - is a good way to gain access to users' computers.

[happyg]

Xbox Live among game services targeted by US and UK spy agencies

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 files were obtained by the Guardian and are being published on Monday in partnership with the New York Times and ProPublica.

More of article at link: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/09/nsa-spies-online-games-world-warcraft-second-life

[olde north church]

Orcs (snicker)

[Atomic Cow]

They can have my BFG 9000 when they pry it from my cold dead hands.

[Cincinnatus]

They are "infiltrating" the world of gamers because they are looking for recruits like in this movie:

The Last Starfighter: Trailer-park teenager Lance Guest regularly escapes from his humdrum existence by playing the video game Starfighter. His expertise at this recreational endeavor attracts the attention of affable stranger Robert Preston. Before he knows what's happening, Guest is whisked by Preston into the outer reaches of the galaxy! It turns out that the Starfighter game is being played in deadly earnest in outer space, and that Guest is expected to join Preston's Star League, then do battle with the wicked Kodan forces.