NSA Spied On 'World Of Warcraft' And 'Second Life' Gamers, According To New Snowden Documents [REPORT]
The United States National Security Agency’s (NSA) foreign surveillance program was revealed to have spied on online gaming communities such as "Second Life" and Activision Blizzard's (NASDAQ:ATVI) "World of Warcraft" on Monday.
According to a joint report by the New York Times, the Guardian and ProPublica that was based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward J. Snowden, American and British spies infiltrated the massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs), gathering data and spying on millions of players around the world.
The documents, which were published online by ProPublica, detail a disturbing position taken on online gaming, with the NSA attempting to justify its spying practices by stating that online gaming communities are a potential “target-rich communication network.”
The first lines of the latest NSA documents read: “Although online gaming may seem like an innocuous form of entertainment, when the basic features and capabilities are examined, it could potentially become a target-rich communication network.”
A look at the table of contents of the classified documents also indicates a disturbing position toward online gaming communities. Chapter titles reflect not only using online gaming communities for intelligence gathering, but for positioning online gaming as a propaganda platform.
One such title reads: “Chapter 1 – EXPLOITATION AND FUNCITON [sic] OF GAMES: AN INTERACTIVE INFLUENCE MEDIUM”
Chapter 3’s title reads: “PLAUSIBLE SCENARIOS OF THE USE OF GAMES IN TERRORIST ACTIVITIES”
The NSA’s views on online gaming are further reflected with chapter 5, “WINNING HEARTS AND MINDSVIRTUALLY”
Looking further into the NSA documents, intelligence agencies not only monitored MMORPGs, but first person shooter (FPS) games such as the U.S. Army’ own “America’s Army” game and flight simulator communities such as those based around Microsoft’s [(NASDAQ:MSFT)] Flight Simulator.”
In addition to being seen as an intelligence-gathering platform, U.S. intelligence agencies believed that the games could be used for much more: “GVEs are an opportunity! We can use games for: CNE exploits, social network analysis, HUMINT targeting, ID tracking (photos, doc IDs), Sharing activities, geo-location of target, and collection of comms.” [sic]
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no idea where the butter and biscuit came from
I'm Wasted_Wisdom by the way....Some of you know me; some of you don't.
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