Real-life spies infiltrated World of Warcraft and Second Life to gather intelligence on gamers

[unhappycamper]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/09/real-life-spies-infiltrated-world-of-warcraft-and-second-life-to-gather-intelligence-on-gamers/



NSA and GCHQ collect gamers’ chats and deploy real-life agents into World of Warcraft and Second Life

Real-life spies infiltrated World of Warcraft and Second Life to gather intelligence on gamers
By James Ball, The Guardian
Monday, December 9, 2013 8:07 EST

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.


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More at --> http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/dec/09/nsa-files-games-virtual-environments-paper-pdf

[Egnever]

1. And with that I think we jump the shark