Spy Games: NSA and CIA Allegedly Tried to Recruit World of Warcraft and Second Life Players

In a report titled “World of Spycraft: NSA and CIA Spied in Online Games,” ProPublica lays out the framework by which the NSA and CIA allegedly worked to snoop in online games, attempting to zero in on terrorists or criminals who might try to use the hypothetically anonymous virtual environments to communicate, move money or plot attacks.

As such, says ProPublica:

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. Because militants often rely on features common to video games — fake identities, voice and text chats, a way to conduct financial transactions — American and British intelligence agencies worried that they might be operating there, according to the papers.

The findings stem from the trove of classified information released by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Information from that stack has been released intermittently since June 2013.

 

Read more: Spy Games: NSA and CIA Allegedly Tried to Recruit World of Warcraft and Second Life Players | TIME.com http://techland.time.com/2013/12/09/spy-games-the-nsa-and-cia-allegedly-tried-to-recruit-world-of-warcraft-and-second-life-players/#ixzz2n4t4OVds