Government Continues To Search Virtual Worlds For Terrorists
from the anyone-look-on-America's-Army? dept
A few weeks back, we pointed to a ridiculous report from the federal government's Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, claiming that places like Second Life could be breeding grounds for terrorists. Why Second Life as opposed to any standard web chat room? That's not at all clear. Salon has gone through and thoroughly debunked the notion that terrorists are likely to use Second Life, noting that the so-called "experts" who made the claims clearly had never used Second Life. Yet, don't think that means the government won't keep up its fear-mongering over the issue. Wired is reporting that the U.S. intelligence community is working on software to detect terrorists infiltrating World of Warcraft. Initially, the program will focus on just profiling the behavior of people in such virtual worlds, but down the road they hope that it will automatically identify those likely to be terrorists. I wonder if they'll use similar programs in the Army's own America's Army online video game?
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: second life, terrorism, virtual worlds, world of warcraft
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
I'm a terrist
[ link to this | view in thread ]
I wonder if I should worry...
I expect to hear a knock on my door sometime soon...
EtG
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
WoW....
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: WoW....
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Oblig. Tick Quote
Tick: No Thanks, we've got all the govt. we need.
I think the US has more than enough at the moment.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
I hide in Halo!
I kill and destroy hundreds regularly by running over to their base with guns and explosives and reeking havoc!
Fear me!
I'll come to a Halo server near you!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Oh noez.
Sorry horde =/
[ link to this | view in thread ]
???
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Terrorists, eh?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
This is bogus, but they already know that...
GW is built heavily on equal sized team vs team combat, so this was a perfectly valid - and effective - strategy. There's no penalty of any kind for dying in pvp combat, and the goal is for your TEAM to win - it doesn't matter whether you personally survive the match. You get immediately resurrected at the end of the round, and if your team wins, everyone gets the reward, regardless of who is and isn't still alive.
So, what would this software see?
1. I use a heavily offensive, self-destructive battle tactic, taking out whoever I can with no regard to self-preservation. I probably get some bonus red flags for targeting the healers. :P
2. The words "suicide" and "bomb" come up quite often in chat, and are a rather accurate description of what's happening - in the GAME.
Obviously, that's going to raise a very strong, very false, positive.
This is hardly a unique case. Games are GAMES - something you play for fun. Strategic games are all about winning at any "cost" - because really, there is no cost. Nothing dies that can't be respawned, nothing gets blown up that can't be rebuilt, often in minutes. Because of this, all kinds of tactics that if done in real life would be abhorant and probably labeled terroristic in the virtual world are simply a player going for an offensive strategy.
It gets even worse with games that actually involve real role play, and include player-run governments. Plenty of nice, well-adjusted, friendly people in real life like to play evil characters in games, including assassins and other roles that would be labeled terroristic. Indeed, their CHARACTER very well may be known as a terrorist in the game world! After all, if the only evil characters in the game are NPCs, things can get pretty boring... especially if the world is supposed to involve a good amount of player vs player combat. Someone needs to be the bad guy, and game creators usually make sure there's enough direct appeal to being an evil character that a decent percentage of their players will do so.
A person's choice of battle tactics, character role, both, etc, say nothing about what that person does in real life. Hell, most people aren't even consistent. I normally play good characters in RP games, but that doesn't mean I'll never roll up a villain here and there for a change of pace.
Of course, the government is fully aware that trying to link in game evil to any real world evil is totally bogus. I highly doubt that's the goal though. After all, when we stop living in a culture of fear, BS like the Patriot Act will get thrown out, and the US will actually start to go back to the principles it was founded on. There's nothing the current administration would like to see less. As long as they can throw "orange alerts" and "Oh noes! Online worlds training terrorists!" announcements, enough of the public won't resist them pissing on the constitution that they'll be able to do so successfully. It will work only for so long though, and I think at this point that a large enough majority of US citizens will have reached the limits of their BS tolerance VERY SOON that the current irrationality are country is running on is finally going to fade out. Either that, or declaring wars all over the place and running our alliances and our economy into the ground will start another depression, and THAT will give people the reality check they need. Either way, in the long run, sanity will reign over the US again.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Griefers: The New Terrorist
The TSA has also weighed in, stating their "heavy interest" in protecting airline safety by conducting searches of persons checking into and logging out of the online worlds. Shoes, fluids near keyboards, and all sharp virtual objects will soon be banned.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Lol
@17, I like what poster #6 said, Jihad R Us
Since they can't empirically prove that there are children playing WoW (I know a lack of proof never stopped them before), what will they say they are doing this for?
"Think of and protect the gnomes!!!"
[ link to this | view in thread ]
What would they think
[ link to this | view in thread ]
How is this legal?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: This is bogus, but they already know that...
when i played tribes (an old team based FPS) many years ago, i would plant plastic explosives on turrets, force fields, and the like to punch a hole in the enemy's defenses. since the turrets often killed you while you were planting your bombs, we would call it suicide bombing. the code word in team chat for a suicide bombing was "jihad". as in, "hey chris, we need a jihad on the tower base". the renegades mod even had a special "suicide det pack" that blew up if you were killed or committed suicide. suicide bombing is very effective when your bombers can respawn almost instantly.
moving on to asheron's call (an old MMO), i used to play a special kind of mage that didn't use war magic (the only form of truly offensive magic) and instead used hit point drains and attacks that hurt you as well as your opponent called "hecatombs". the nickname for this character template was "the martyr mage".
the strategy was simple: start at full health, use a hecatomb to hurt your opponent (which hurt you too, but hurts them more), use a drain to recover the damage you just took (hurting them more, and healing you), then fire a hecatomb again. if they were still alive their health was probably too low to drain effectively, so you cast a heal spell to recover more health and threw another hecatomb to finish them off.
war magic was the most expensive skill in the game. having a mage with a bunch of extra skill points meant you could have really high skills in stuff that mages usually didn't have, like defenses.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
you guys are all missing the real point...
imagine it:
Boss: you playing 2nd life AGAIN!!!!
Luser: NO!! I'm looking for terrorists boss!
Boss: do you really expect me to believe that?
Luser: Yes! Terrorists are infiltrating 2nd life and using for a base and communication platform. Seriously.
Boss: Hmmm... Better not take a chance. Carry on soldier!
It is genius. Luser uses gubbmint assets to play 2nd life all day.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Looking to sell a Bridge, slightly used located in
This planets need PyRe
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Lol
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: I'm a terrist
[ link to this | view in thread ]