AT&T Tells Shareholders To Mind Their Own Business Concerning Its Relationship With The NSA

Newest Leak Shows NSA, GCHQ Infiltrated World Of Warcraft, Second Life

from the on-the-internet,-no-one-knows-you're-an-octopus dept

Mon, Dec 9th 2013 9:45am — Tim Cushing

Apparently, there's nowhere our intelligence agencies won't go in ostensibly in search of terrorists. The latest leak from Snowden, as published by ProPublica, New York Times and The Guardian, shows the NSA and GCHQ are actively infiltrating MMOs and other online gatherings in order to fight terrorism.

Not limiting their activities to the earthly realm, American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life, conducting surveillance and scooping up data in the online games played by millions of people across the globe, according to newly disclosed classified documents.

Fearing that terrorist or criminal networks could use the games to communicate secretly, move money or plot attacks, the documents show, intelligence operatives have entered terrain populated by digital avatars that include elves, gnomes and supermodels.

The spies have created make-believe characters to snoop and to try to recruit informers, while also collecting data and contents of communications between players, according to the documents, disclosed by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden.

According to the document (from 2008), online games like World of Warcraft and Second Life are potentially "target-rich environments" in which suspected terrorists "hide in plain sight." (And it's not just MMOs. Xbox Live has apparently been swept up in the surveillance efforts as well.) Despite this assertion, the documents contain no evidence that any terrorists have been uncovered by agents and analysts. In fact, experts and developers of games like these have found no evidence that terrorists are using their services to communicate or recruit new members.

Once again, the efforts of the NSA and GCHQ seem to be focusing time and energy searching locations where terrorists would be least likely to be "hiding in plain sight," much in the way that grabbing data from mainstream email services and social platforms is only going to find the most amateurish of wrongdoers.

Games “are built and operated by companies looking to make money, so the players’ identity and activity is tracked,” said Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution, an author of “Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know.” “For terror groups looking to keep their communications secret, there are far more effective and easier ways to do so than putting on a troll avatar.”

Not only is the effort highly inefficient, but it's also highly redundant. As ProPublica points out, there are so many agents from the Pentagon, CIA and FBI chasing targets in virtual worlds that a "deconfliction" group was created just to avoid online "collisions."

Blizzard, the developer behind World of Warcraft, has gone on record stating that if intelligence agencies are using the service to track terrorists, it hasn't been informed or given its permission. Microsoft and Linden Lab (Second Life's developer) declined to comment.

There may be a good reason Linden Lab isn't issuing a statement. Its former CTO is an ex-military officer with top secret clearance.

In 2007, as the NSA and other intelligence agencies were beginning to explore virtual games, NSA officials met with the chief technology officer for the manufacturer of Second Life, the San Francisco-based Linden Lab. The executive, Cory Ondrejka, was a former Navy officer who had worked at the NSA with a top-secret security clearance.

He visited the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., in May 2007 to speak to staff members over a brown bag lunch, according to an internal agency announcement. “Second Life has proven that virtual worlds of social networking are a reality: come hear Cory tell you why!” said the announcement. It added that virtual worlds gave the government the opportunity “to understand the motivation, context and consequent behaviors of non-Americans through observation, without leaving U.S. soil.”

GCHQ, in particular, has used Second Life to track down a crime ring selling stolen credit card information. While the use of these games in discovering and tracking terrorists still remains largely theoretical, GCHQ found the online games did offer one benefit:

According to the minutes of a January 2009 meeting, GCHQ’s “network gaming exploitation team” had identified engineers, embassy drivers, scientists and other foreign intelligence operatives to be World of Warcraft players — potential targets for recruitment as agents.

The NSA, on the other hand, seems to have found little more than evidence that terrorism suspects are largely like non-terrorists when they play online games -- they do it for enjoyment.

One NSA document said that the World of Warcraft monitoring “continues to uncover potential Sigint value by identifying accounts, characters and guilds related to Islamic extremist groups, nuclear proliferation and arms dealing.” In other words, targets of interest appeared to be playing the fantasy game, though the document does not indicate that they were doing so for any nefarious purposes.

Whether or not these agencies are actually hunting down terrorists, one this is for certain: large amounts of communications are being caught in the surveillance nets.

One document says that while GCHQ was testing its ability to spy on Second Life in real time, British intelligence officers vacuumed up three days’ worth of Second Life chat, instant message and financial transaction data, totaling 176,677 lines of data, which included the content of the communications.

Not surprisingly, there's also a profit motive tied into this infiltration of online games. SAIC, a government contractor specializing in surveillance systems (and building non-functional, incredibly expensive software), may have set this online surveillance in motion back in 2007.

In one 66-page document from 2007, part of the cache released by Mr. Snowden, the contracting giant SAIC promoted its ability to support “intelligence collection in the game space,” and warned that online games could be used by militant groups to recruit followers and could provide “terrorist organizations with a powerful platform to reach core target audiences.”

ProPublica notes that there's nothing in the documents that suggests SAIC ended up with a contract (at that time) as a result of its self-promotion, but it does appear that SAIC (along with Lockheed Martin) won a multi-million dollar contract a couple of years later, shortly after it participated in a discussion about a proposed government study of the link between online and offline behavior in MMO gamers.

The question is how useful these infiltrations have been after a half-decade of use. The agencies have stated they feel these games could be used for communication and recruitment, but nothing has surfaced indicating the surveillance is effective. It largely seems to be another way to gather data, something the agencies already have too much of. If nothing else, GCHQ seems to be using it for a headhunting tool, but I'm not sure how many potential employees would be flattered to know they've been "scouted" by a questionable surveillance program. For now, it seems to be another case of the reach far exceeding the grasp, not that this lack of success ever seems to result in scaling back the "reach."

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Filed Under: gchq, mmos, nsa, second life, surveillance, virtual worlds, world of warcraft
Companies: blizzard, linden lab, microsoft

71 Comments

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silverscarcat (profile), 9 Dec 2013 @ 7:50am

Huh...
So all the people who say "I'm at the office, I should be working, but I'm playing games" are from the government?

...

NOW it makes sense!
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Ninja (profile), 9 Dec 2013 @ 8:58am

Oh. And I thought SI:7 was just some made up Stormwind agency. Scary stuff.

On another news terrorists happen to be humans that enjoy some entertainment and end up leaving traces that any focused, warranted, old-fashined investigative effort can catch.
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ltlw0lf (profile), 9 Dec 2013 @ 9:49am

Re: Huh...
NOW it makes sense!

On that note, I would like to formally volunteer to be NSA's lead game player for "EvE Online." Just let me know where I need to send my resume.
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vegetaman (profile), 9 Dec 2013 @ 9:52am

I can see it now. The NSA on a multi-person and multi-year manhunt for the true identify of the illusive World of Warcraft moron known only as "Leeroy Jenkins".
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FM Hilton, 9 Dec 2013 @ 9:55am

Playing games at work!
You know, I'd love to be employed by the government to go play games on the Internet while working. My present employer doesn't allow it..gee whiz.

I know what I missed by not following up that employment interview with the FBI so long ago! Darn, what a fool I am!

But on the serious side-how many millions of dollars are we spending for the various agencies to play games all day in hopes of finding terrorists? Too many, and nothing has been gained from it.

I'd call it a waste of money and not very funny at all and another damned good reason to shut them all down.
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Baron von Robber, 9 Dec 2013 @ 9:56am

Maybe somebody should tell the NSA...
...that Assassins in Everquest2 are not REALLY Al-Queda.
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pixelpusher220 (profile), 9 Dec 2013 @ 9:59am

Re: Re: Huh...
They already have it.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:03am

makes perfect sense
if I wanted to communicate with others without risk its what I would use.
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ltlw0lf (profile), 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:03am

Re: Re: Re: Huh...
They already have it.

I am sure they do (all of them, my in game characters resumes and my resume.)
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:04am

ahh back with the censorship.. I win again :)
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:05am

Now we know for certain that the spy agencies live in a fantasy world.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:08am

at least you know when your beaten

I guess I am just too good for you to cope with.. making you need to CENSOR me or else look like a fool.. not that its hard for you to do that to yourselves.
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justok (profile), 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:09am

Wait, Second Life is still around?
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Snertly (profile), 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:14am

Why limit the virtual world to merely spying?

Blizzard and the United Nations should team up and create special instances where national teams can battle for the resolution of international issues. World of WARcraft would make an excellent battleground for the War of the Future.
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Christopher Kellen (profile), 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:15am

Yes. "Infiltrated." That is the correct term for lolzganking newbs in Durotar, amirite my Night Elf brothas?
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This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it

out_of_the_blue, 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:16am

Who here has said teh internets is one giant spy grid?
Me. It's not difficult: once you've got that basic premise figured out, then EVERY conceivable way and place to spy will be infested. -- Including your precious Google. Think NSA has overlooked the possibilities with Google?
Google defenders are much like NSA defenders: basically blind to privacy, just insist over objections to being spied on: "we're only helping and you should be grateful!".

06:16:01[h-257-1] [ This suppresses the kids from fraud of using my screen name. ]
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:16am

what if I payed for your 'insider'
would you censor me then, or accept the money ?? I wonder..
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:17am

I'm ok with some parts
I'm ok with spook avatars. What I'm not Ok with is:
- Getting access to game/chat logs without a warrant
- Making their own games for the purpose of spying on players (no privacy protection for americans/innocents)
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Anonymoose, 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:19am

M$'s attempt at mandatory Kinect on XBone makes sense now
What spy agency wouldn't love an always on microphone and camera in every living room? Given the cozy relationship between Microsoft and spy agencies (and government in general) this all makes perfect sense now.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:22am

Re:
Yeah, surprised me too.
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This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it

out_of_the_engrish, 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:23am

I. is not difficult: figured out every conceivable way a basic premise of the spy was infested. Include your precious Google. Many mistakes you can make Google NSA?

Displays only the essence of the supporters to challenge Google Defender NSA: spying privacy blinds them: ', helps us appreciate that! '.

6:16:01 [257-1 h] [using this screen name, children were suppressed from the scam. ]
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:25am

MASNICK HAS TO CENSOR, he has nothing left to do.
does it worry you that you have such weak arguments, and are so scared of fair debate that you have to resort to lowly censorship to hide behind ??

its sad that your best you can do is censor, thus showing how scared you are of someone questioning your lies and falsehoods.

But it's certainly not unexpected, when your beat your beat, we all know that..

I guess its easier to convince your 12 fans than to present information that is true or stand up to scrutiny!
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That Anonymous Coward (profile), 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:26am

So if someone can imagine some possible way something might happen we have to pour billions into it for an unlimited amount of time, just in case.

My god, its the **AA model.
If they can imagine a way it might hurt them, they pour endless cash into killing it off or crippling it.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:26am

what do you do when you 'review' check it for facts, that show what you say is mostly bullshit ? see if it something you should be scared of, so you need to censor to hide it ?

pathetic.
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Mark Wing, 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:28am

I've long suspected that the NSA was behind all the Chuck Norris jokes in WoW.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:36am

Makes sense. Ever spent much time playing online games? Those kids have weapons grade insults.

If such perfectly refined racial, sexual, and generally vile slurry were to end up in the wrong hands it could be made into some sort of WMD (weapon of mass dicks)! Then we'd all be screwed!
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:38am

One NSA document said that the World of Warcraft monitoring �continues to uncover potential Sigint value by identifying accounts, characters and guilds related to Islamic extremist groups, nuclear proliferation and arms dealing.� In other words, targets of interest appeared to be playing the fantasy game, though the document does not indicate that they were doing so for any nefarious purposes.

I think we may have found the root of the problem with the NSA (and the rest of the intelligence community for that matter) with regards to it's surveillance efforts and the way it has tried to justify them to the angry public. They simply can't distinguish the difference between fantasy and reality. They dream up all kinds of scary scenarios and present them to the public as justification for these constitutional violations but the problem is they are only in their heads while they believe that they are real.

Philosophically there is a term for this. Medically it's a sign of psychosis.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:40am

Wait, why would Microsoft decline to comment on this? That makes it very suspicious of Microsoft.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:40am

in other words, there hasn't been a single thing that has not been infiltrated, dissected or abused, just because it could/can be! and anyone who thinks it will stop is in cloud cuckoo land! all that will happen is, the surveillance will be more obscured, more difficult to be found and the people will carry on losing more and more of their privacy and freedom, until the Police State that we are on the verge of already, becomes a clear reality!
even now, the UK police are using information disclosed by GCHQ to shut down web sites that have been decided as 'infringing, but not by any court! and they have, apparently, removed advertisers from web sites and left malware in place instead! they reckon this is 'looking after the public'! yeah, right!!
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:42am

Re:
Alliance scum!
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scotts13 (profile), 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:44am

Perhaps we should pay people to stand around in public and listen to the conversations of passers-by. They might be terrorists, too. It would be good for the unemployment numbers.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:44am

But. Terrorists.
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Trevor, 9 Dec 2013 @ 10:51am

Nope.
Aaaaaand that's why I won't be getting an Xbox One. Listening in to Xbox Live = Easy access to the always on Kinect. No thank you.

Also, I'm sure Sony's systems aren't much more secure, but at least the PS4 doesn't REQURIE a camera to work. I'm fine without voice/gesture controls if it means no one's lookin' in my living room.
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DogBreath, 9 Dec 2013 @ 11:02am

It's a little too late for some, GCHQ...
Lord British was assassinated by a terrorist a long time ago.

Where were you when we really needed you back in 1997?
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Rikuo (profile), 9 Dec 2013 @ 11:04am

Re: Nope.
Precisely. Normally, the thought of the government going so far as to monitor networked cameras in your home is insane, but articles like this just demonstrate the mindset of the intelligence gathering community - if people can use something to communicate, then terrorists could potentially use it to communicate, thus every single message passing through this medium must be monitored and recorded. Given that mindset, why would they suddenly stop at not watching via Kinect?
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 11:04am

Ok here's a strategy to combat this....
Design a series of bots to play games and interact with one another, (including having simulated conversations over chat functionality) program the in the ability to randomly, and occasionally trigger simulated conversation that would peak the NSA's interests, then scatter these game playing bots about the globe playing these games. Every so often the code for interaction between them will get executed that will cause the NSA to launch an investigation that is effectively a wild goose chase. Launch enough of the bots to the point that the chances of an investigation being a complete waste of time and resources is so high that they eventually give up and go look into some other source of intelligence.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 11:05am

Re:
Sure, and why we're at it, let's just connect our fleets of drones to the gaming and let unaware users fight the "real" war on terror.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 11:07am

Re: M$'s attempt at mandatory Kinect on XBone makes sense now
thank you. yes, I've been saying this since the patent was revealed online.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 11:09am

Re:
If you' aren't suspicious of Microsoft, you've haven't been paying attention. ;)

Ever hear of the Mocrosoft NSA registry key?

http://cryptome.org/nsakey-ms-dc.htm
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 11:13am

Re: Re: Nope.
http://gizmodo.com/fbi-can-secretly-activate-laptop-cameras-without-the-in-1478371370
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 11:15am

Re: Who here has said teh internets is one giant spy grid?
Except I go into using Google tools knowing that it is tracked. Kinda like going into public and being caught on a camera. What I don't like is the NSA installing cameras in my house to track my every move.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 11:21am

Re:
LEEEEROOOYYYYY
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 11:22am

The real terrorists....
are these: https://scontent-b-iad.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc1/1005015_701529543214152_309001359_n.jpg
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 11:23am

Maybe if the NSA wasn't playing World of Warcraft and Second Life all day long, they could have stopped the Boston Marathon bombings.
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gorehound (profile), 9 Dec 2013 @ 11:34am

The US Gov is the real Cerebus ! We will destroy Cerebus and we will toast the reapers.
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Bayan Rafeh (profile), 9 Dec 2013 @ 11:39am

Boss: Why are you playing world of warcraft?
Employee: Because I'm.. uh.. TERRORISTS.
Boss: Fair enough, carry on.
Employee: Thank you sir.*continues playing*
YOU GODDAMN NOOB...
Boss: What was that?
Employee: I mean TERRORIST. FUCKING TERRORIST.
Boss: There you go.

Seriously, does anyone buy that they were playing World of Warcraft to spy on anyone?
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FM Hilton, 9 Dec 2013 @ 11:47am

The joy of work
"Seriously, does anyone buy that they were playing World of Warcraft to spy on anyone?"

Yes. They're very capable of doing it, and I'm sure there's more than a few WoW players who just jumped for joy when the boss announced that they'd have the chance to do their patriotic duty,get paid for it AND enjoy the job!

Plus: they're paranoid-everyone's a terrorist, even those people in Second Life-and stupid. I rather have my doubts that real terrorists would be wasting their time messaging one another on game chat board when cell phones exist.

But it's a government agency, with all kinds of money to spend.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 12:12pm

I just don't see how the government can tell apart Roleplay from Reality. I've played on a good handful of RP sites on SL and it will be easy for them to slap the terrorist label on any innocent role-player.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 12:21pm

Mobius strip
The government intelligence agencies are the real terrorists. Government intelligence agencies play virtual games to find terrorists. Government intelligence agencies find terrorists in games, but terrorists are only playing games, not engaging with terrorism. Government intelligence agencies have stopped terrorist activities. Yay! Government intelligence agencies spying works!
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 12:22pm

Government intelligence agencies engaging terrorists in the gaming world prevent terrorism, because...
...they're engaging terrorists in virtual game playing preventing them from acts of terrorism. Yay! Government intelligence agencies spying works!
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Geno0wl (profile), 9 Dec 2013 @ 12:53pm

Our money at work folks
I bet some NSA contractor giggled himself to death when they actually approved his suggestion to snoop on WOW.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 12:54pm

hey NSA
those guns i bought in stormwind were legal! and my assassins guild is government sanctioned!
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 1:50pm

This is one of the stupidest waste of tax payer dollars I have ever fucking heard. Who ever said that this was a good idea and green light this program should have his medals stripped and a firm kick on the ass n the way out the door.
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PopeRatzo (profile), 9 Dec 2013 @ 2:00pm

Re: The joy of work
But it's a government agency, with all kinds of money to spend
Private contractors are doing most of the work.

So remember, it's not just "the government" collecting all that information. It's private corporations, who have other non-government clients that might have their own uses for that information.
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kitsune361, 9 Dec 2013 @ 2:07pm

Amazed and Amused.
I've read through approximately half the article, and I am both amused and amazed. Firstly, it's all very SRS BIZNES over some very silly things.

Firstly, targets: WoW and SL? Really? SL has been dying for years. There are a few people who still make money hand-over-fist, but from my recent experience LL's been strangling their golden goose for a while.

Tracking the users of World of Warcraft, while being the biggest MMO for a while, the RL motivational force of WoW's player base is, in my experience, lacking. If they wanted to scope a bunch of fanatic terrorists I'm surprised they didn't infiltrate some of the corps in Eve Online.

There have been plans of RL skullduggery to sabotage groups in Eve. Players trying to hire a guy to cut the power of someone in another country to leave his Titan vulnerable. Heists that can be counted IRL thousands of USD. I'm surprised Goonfleet's suicide attacks on mining barges doesn't raise a red flag in some government DB. Oh, and their masterful forum propaganda! If I were an editor for Inspire, these are the guy's I'd want to recruit as copy writers and graphic designers.

Also, on the idea of tapping SL, someone I follow retweeted this little gem: https://twitter.com/puellavulnerata/status/410028498867064832
I wonder if that ex-company-man CTO of LL had some hand in this?
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 2:30pm

SL context
I think the Second Life suggestions should be considered in context -- remember, in the mid-2000s, technology-illiterate management discovered SL, and was convinced it was the wave of the future -- virtual meetings, virtual classrooms, all that shit. So it makes sense that, from some non-very-informed perspectives, SL would look like it might develop into a potentially interesting site for intelligence gathering. Sort of "OMG, encrypted private classrooms for virtual bomb-making lessons!!!!111!!!!eleventy!!! Spy on it right away!"
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 2:36pm

I'll tell who the terrorist are, gold farming operations.
Want to save the world? "of warcraft" shut those terrorist assholes down!
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 3:16pm

I, spy, with my, little eye......coming to a console near you
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Crazy Canuck, 9 Dec 2013 @ 3:43pm

BO of mass destruction
I'm sure all those 40 year old virgins living in their mother's basement are a huge security threat! If they ever left their cave they could devastate an entire convention with their BO!

=P
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That One Guy (profile), 9 Dec 2013 @ 5:05pm

Re:
Beat me to it. 'Trying to find terrorists'... while playing online games... sure they are...
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2013 @ 8:12pm

I play Eve Online and about 6 months ago one of our new members mentioned he was working for the NSA.

We promptly stole his stuff and kicked him out. He wasn't trying to spy on us or anything, just another regular player who happened to work for the NSA. But we should have no tolerance or sympathy for people like that. They're (willingly) part of a big problem that hurts all of us and the least they deserve is to be socially ostracized.

I was really happy to see all the ranking members in our corp agree he had to be burned like he was. Anytime a member was informed about the guy's job, the first reaction was always "Steal his stuff and boot him". I don't think there's anything special about our corp, I think a lot of people around the world share these feelings and this attitude towards those who choose to work for the NSA and other agencies who spy on all of us.

Hopefully it will become socially unacceptable to do that job and it will limit the people these agencies can hire.
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Dannie blaze (profile), 10 Dec 2013 @ 1:20am

Re:
But I'm sure they're all having great fun doing raids with their level 90 Pandaran monk.

At least someone is benefiting from their work, even if it is just a fantasy world, because they sure as hell aren't doing anything of benefit here on Earth.
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DOlz (profile), 10 Dec 2013 @ 9:19am

So that's how they know
I have wondered how when I received an unwanted guild invite that ends with, "we know you'll made a great recruit", knew that when we had never talked before,
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Trevor, 10 Dec 2013 @ 9:31am

Re: Re: Nope.
Exactly.

Also, reports have shown analysts routinely spied on their significant others (and people they wanted to be their significant others), as well as private phone conversations between deployed troops and their families. This history shows that easy access to someone's living room or bedroom would be a very tempting target for these people.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Dec 2013 @ 11:13am

Re: makes perfect sense
It only makes sense to people that don't understand how the Internet works.

Oh, hey, guess what. Every WoW player in the world understands that their chats aren't 'private'.

If they are even the least decent WoW player, they will have add-ons installed...which gives the add-on dev access to anything you do in WoW.

It's so easy to track conversations in WoW all you have to do is go to the forums and see the copypasta from in-game chats.

What a waste of resources.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Dec 2013 @ 11:14am

Re: Re:
FOR THE HORDE!
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Bob Kerfufal, 10 Dec 2013 @ 10:16pm

Political oppression in the guise of counter-terrorism...
My favorite quote, as one who has encountered intel agents through MMO's as a target...

"One NSA document said that the World of Warcraft monitoring �continues to uncover potential Sigint value by identifying accounts, characters and guilds related to Islamic extremist groups, nuclear proliferation and arms dealing.� In other words, targets of interest appeared to be playing the fantasy game, though the document does not indicate that they were doing so for any nefarious purposes."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
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Bob Kerfufal, 10 Dec 2013 @ 10:24pm

Oops...
Not an expert on psychological illnesses... I'm sure these assholes that work at the government agencies are under immense pressure to produce results, but I guess this would be - more likely - their condition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia

These people are creepy, they know stuff about your personal life and randomly start chatting with you about things unique to only a small subset of the population - like the first person I met in Eve Online just started talking to me about the Kansas City Prophets - few to any people know who those guys are - and - given that I came from a cult that molested me and is heavily connected to that group after which I was tortured by the government, it's particularly frustrating to know there's just random people that know stuff about your personal life that will harass you online for no other reason.
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Alt0, 11 Dec 2013 @ 7:04am

Re: Re:
Rebel Bastard
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Alt0, 11 Dec 2013 @ 7:12am

What's Worse
..Word is they (the NSA) are buying Farmed GOLD from the Chinese!
This MUST be stopped!
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TiagoTiago (profile), 29 Jan 2014 @ 6:22am

Hm, so this is the real reason Linden Lab didn't allowed p2p chat encryption...
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