Salem

Well it had to come out some time. Pras Snowden. Thoughts?

Al-Jazeera http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/9/world-of-warcraftnsagchq.html

The Gaurdian http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/09/nsa-spies-online-games-world-warcraft-second-life

The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/world/spies-dragnet-reaches-a-playing-field-of-elves-and-trolls.html?hp

ProPublica http://www.propublica.org/article/world-of-spycraft-intelligence-agencies-spied-in-online-games

Daily Show http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R0rGEWzW7U

This is my favorite line from the report:

"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."-Al Jazeera

The ***** GCHQ are ***** bug abusers. At the very least they could have played the games without 'sploits. ***** Cheating Brits.

"According to the document, GCHQ had already made a "vigorous effort" to exploit games, including "exploitation modules" against Xbox Live and World of Warcraft."-The Guardian


"...noting that Hezbollah had produced a game called Special Forces 2."-The Guardian

Holy ****, Hezbollah's got some mad game Dev skills. Check out this game the NSA tried to hack which is developed and owned by Hezbollah.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxdcj37_ndQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7b2MGvPzIo

Only 10 bucks and you get to go up against actual Hezbollah trainees.
http://soldierfront2.aeriagames.com/

"In spring 2009, academics and defense contractors gathered at the Marriott at Washington Dulles International Airport to present proposals for a government study about how players’ behavior in a game like World of Warcraft might be linked to their real-world identities. After the conference, both SAIC and Lockheed Martin won contracts worth several million dollars, administered by an office within the intelligence community that finances research projects.

It is not clear how useful such research might be. A group at the Palo Alto Research Center, for example, produced a government-funded study of World of Warcraft that found “younger players and male players preferring competitive, hack-and-slash activities, and older and female players preferring noncombat activities,” such as exploring the virtual world. A group from the nonprofit SRI International, meanwhile, found that players under age 18 often used all capital letters both in chat messages and in their avatar names."-NYT

Behavioral Online Gamer Studies.
I wonder what they thought of the Chief.

"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"-ProPublica
http://forum.salemthegame.com/viewforum.php?f=8

“Second Life has proven that virtual worlds of social networking are a reality. 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.”-ProPublica

I knew there was a reason I hated ''Second Life'.

Claeyt wrote:Well it had to come out some time. Pras Snowden. Thoughts?

Al-Jazeera http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/9/world-of-warcraftnsagchq.html

The Gaurdian http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/09/nsa-spies-online-games-world-warcraft-second-life

Pretty sure terrorists would give up on using salem in the first 5 minutes of gameplay like most others

Why get up in arms about it now? Why not when the FBI first announced that they were going to monitor online communications in games to try and catch terrorist activities? Why not when it was all over the news a couple years ago that the NSA was opening this giant listening post in Utah to capture 100% of the worlds data traffic?

FYI, gold farmers confirmed terrorists: https://www.google.com/search?q=FBI+world+of+warcraft

Well we decided to call them and tell them that you we're manufacturing high-yield explosive Claeyt. I'm surprised it worked!

To NSA agents:

Claeyt is a member of a grass roots terrorist group that has been planning, recently, to launch attacks at all state capitals. We all know this of course.

jcwilk wrote:Al-Jazeera http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/9/world-of-warcraftnsagchq.html

Love how that article uses the term "infiltrated." I'm sure they were let in the door knowingly by Activision-Blizzard just like Google and Microsoft have done.

jcwilk wrote:-Scissors.-

Don't give the MM group a reason to make a cheesy-anti-terrorism thread. Though we know they most likely will do it.

MagicManICT wrote:Why get up in arms about it now? Why not when the FBI first announced that they were going to monitor online communications in games to try and catch terrorist activities? Why not when it was all over the news a couple years ago that the NSA was opening this giant listening post in Utah to capture 100% of the worlds data traffic?

FYI, gold farmers confirmed terrorists: https://www.google.com/search?q=FBI+world+of+warcraft

Because this is the first time the NSA admitted to abusing the in-game chats to entrap people and also using video and voice recognition technology to record American Gamers, which is against the law. The FBI tracking bit coin farmers in games is a different mess entirely but may actually be legal.

Although that would have been an awesome job title: NSA World-of-Warcraft Infiltration Specialist.

shut up Claeyt

Dallane wrote:shut up Claeyt

Chief PeePooKaKa
MM Tribe

I thought Claeyt loved the government.