Latest set of documents leaked by whistle-blower Edward Snowden throws light on how spooks over at NSA and GCHQ infiltrated the virtual worlds of online games like World of Warcraft and Second Life to carry out their clandestine surveillance and snooping activities.
The report first appeared on The Guardian along with The New York Times and ProPublica and the classified document can be found here.
Spies over at the US and UK intelligence agencies allegedly tried to zero-in on possible terrorists who might be using the virtual world and characters to communicate, transfer money and even plot attacks. ProPublica reports that the spooks created virtual characters to even recruit informants and collected data on thousands of users including their communication.
The spooks went about looking for probable terrorist in the virtual world because militants often rely on fake identities, voice and text messages – something that is quite similar to what goes on in video games.
In what seems to be another example of rampant violation of legal framework by NSA, War of Worldcraft developers have revealed that neither they were contacted by the snoops for the purpose of in-game surveillance nor have they granted any such permission to any government organization.
“We are unaware of any surveillance taking place,” and “If it was, it would have been done without our knowledge or permission”, said Blizzard Entertainment spokesperson.
The document doesn’t cite any success owing to the surveillance and data collection activities from online games. Further the document also notes that the spies over at FBI and CIA went overboard at times with their efforts because of which they had to create “deconfliction” group to mitigate unintended agency run-ins.
