NSA admits to surveilling gamers via Xbox Live gaming service

NSA and CIA counterterrorism efforts included Xbox Live, Second Life, WoW spying

Fears that the virtual hang-outs for online gamers could become a hotbed for terrorist activity and planning led both British and American intelligence groups to actively spy on services like Xbox Live, World of Warcraft and Second Life, according to newly disclosed classified documents.

LINK

Not sure what data of national security import they think they can glean from foul-mouthed, infantile gamers slinging racial epithets at each other, but... whatever.

Little by little...

They would never state their actual reason.

No significant surveilling necessary... only enough to leave a trail and then get it public and you can have desired effects.

I listened in on one of my older kids' live xbox game things.. I think it was call of duty. The idiocy of the banter was.. mind numbing. As in if you HAD to listen to it, it would be painful and make you HATE your job. This might be a win-win, folks. NSA employees leaving their jobs for less mind numbing private sector jobs by the droves. Working mall security or something.

reply to post by iLemming


Could be, or, More likely a bunch of Gamers work at the site and had to quickly come up with an excuse for wasting tax payers dollars sitting on their butts hours on end playing games online...

Could happen.

reply to post by iLemming

The document notes that there were so many US intelligence agents operating inside online games that a “deconfliction” group was required, which ensured that the agents weren’t spying on or interfering with each other.

Online games could be used to build a profile of a target’s social networks through analysis of “buddylists and interaction,” as a window for hacking attacks, as a way to obtain identifiers like profile photos, geolocation and collection of a target’s communications, according to the NSA document.

“Given that gaming consoles often include voice headsets, video cameras, and other identifiers, the potential for joining together biometric information with activities was also an exciting one,” the Guardian reports.

www.activistpost.com...
Sad, but I can almost see their justification, and this comes as no surprise these days, because online gaming brings a lot of people(10 Million in WoW) together to share info and create profiles. I don't think it is right by any means, but I can just hear the spiel,"it's for our security."
Brave New World indeed....

reply to post by iLemming


I am not saying that it is right, I think it's creepy and despicable, however... I am not surprised.

Honestly, when it came out years ago that hackers could peer and spy through your cell phone camera or lap top web cam, it was obvious that our government agencies who are much further advanced in technology than the every day citizen, had and were using this on any and every piece of technology they can and could.

Sorry about the run on sentence there.

reply to post by iLemming


I just want every single "oathkeeper" out there to know you are a coward and liar and government leech

What all the effort and money for some kind of pre crime anti terro-r determination? Likely all they found was as discussed, nerd raging and probably a side of a certain roleplay.

jctcle
reply to post by iLemming

 

I just want every single "oathkeeper" out there to know you are a coward and liar and government leech

They have a pill for that... hater-tourettes.. or whatever it is. Never mind the almond smell.

I used to lead a high end raid guild in a competing game to WoW for the past 10 years. I can tell you that in that game people did the following:

1. traded warez
2. traded illegal porn
3. traded credit card numbers
4. traded sexual services for preferences in the game to both players and GM's. (it's a sad state on humanity when people are willing to skype naked for you so they can get preference on virtual loot that drops)
5. made real life money off the blackmarket for in game resources.

Ill give you one example of item 3 that I know for a fact happened.. In that game you can craft items and write various stories, tales , whatever .. A specific ring of people were creating books and signs like that and hiding stolen credit card numbers in those virtual books which only those people knew the locations or how to get to them.

if you think any of those things don't happen in online games right now then you are clueless. Games like that have the ability to setup password protected channels..they have other ways to communicate that are even simpler to use.

People who think games like that are only played by teenagers are wrong..
MMORPGs, online FPS games, insert some other variation are nothing more than IRC channels with fancy graphics and if you think horrible, bad and illegal things don't happen in IRC channels then you really are a computer novice.

Yeah, if I were an agent, and had an excuse for the government to pay me to sit and play online games all day, I'd have certainly done it.

Wow, you mean I really could have gotten to play Half Life and all my favorite games on the power houses of Fort Meade?

Oh..the unfairness of life. All wasted when I figured that path would never get me the real fun and frags. Ohh.. If I'd only known 20 years ago...

I coulda been a contender...!


* Seriously guys... this stuff isn't just overkill, it's creeeepy. When old men spy on young children through physical windows? We call them perverts and sex offenders while stuffing them into a jail where such critters belong. When old men spy on children through digital exploits, we call them the NSA and fund them with billions in black budgets.

Something is seriously warped and broken in this picture.... It really is. Even the Romans would say 'WHAT are you THINKING?!'

Too bad I'm not getting paid to play the game....I want that job.

reply to post by iLemming


The NSA sounds like a bunch of paranoid nansies who never have lived their whole life on a computer and never had a real job.

The weird thing is nobody seems to care. My Xbone One is spying on me constantly for the NSA? That's fine, I have nothing to hide.

Kids today are strange, they seem to be completely comfortable with the idea of Big Brother watching them all the time.

maybe it's time to go old school....buy a sack of green army men, go outside and build dirt forts, and play war games...buy some tinker toys and build all kinds of wacky structures...legos...go out in the garage and have your dad let you build some wood stuff, got some banged up fingers with that one...Frisbee, kites, throw a ball around. get some chalk and draw on your driveway, go to a second-had store and buy some cheap toy trucks, or other stuff....get creative...geez, this isn't rocket science, it's play

Reading between the lines here, I think it's more likely that NSA staffers were found to be playing online games on the job, and this is just a flimsy excuse to cover it up.
I mean, they have all that free time anyway, what with there being no actual terrorists using the interweb for plotting their nefarious schemes, so they have to pass the time somehow and openly surfing porn sites would get flagged with a visit to HR for a wrist slap.

A lot of stuff has happened since, er um, 2006. Newspaper hacking online and wire, financial crisis, (plural)
All the while infornation available, (Thru to the lowest and highest bidder?)

Topics available, global warming, real estate, terrorism forecasts, propagation of national jingoism through media.
Each and every one of those subjects already subject to huge, 'government' financial support in the past , All nothing nuch to do with the guy in the street, other than he/she is the one most affected, and also pays for it.