Apparently the NSA is leaving no stone unturned in order to track and discover potential terrorist plots, even if that search takes them to the anger fueled rants of Xbox Live communications and the mean streets of Stormwind and Ironforge.
According to new documents released by famous whistleblower Edward Snowden, the U.S. and U.K. government's spy agencies have the ability to eavesdrop on conversations in Xbox Live and have even gone as far as to place agents in games like World of Warcraft and Second Life for the purposes of monitoring potential terrorist activity.
A Sept. 2008 memo that was obtained by The Guardian, and is now being published in a partnership with the New York Times and ProPublica states that a concerted drive between the NSA and the U.K.'s sister agency GCHQ have been infiltrating the massive communities playing online games. The efforts even included attempts to recruit potential informants from the games' tech-friendly users.
According to The Guardian, the NSA feared that these games could act as social networking for potential threats to "hide in plain sight" and use the virtual worlds or Xbox Live communications to plan attacks of some sort.
So far there is no evidence that the methods employed to monitor the users on these sites has been met with any success in terms of foiling any terrorist plots.
Microsoft has reportedly declined to comment on the matter as has Philip Rosedale, the founder of Second Life and former CEO of Linden Lab. However, the California-based producer of World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment, said that neither the NSA or GCHQ had contacted it for permission to gather intelligence inside the game. "We are unaware of any surveillance taking place," a spokesperson for the developer said. "If it was, it would have been done without our knowledge or permission."
The NSA declined to comment on the surveillance of games. A spokesperson for GCHQ said the agency did not confirm or deny the revelations but added: "All GCHQ's work is carried out in accordance with strict legal and policy framework which ensures that its activities are authorized, necessary and proportionate, and there is rigorous oversight, including from the secretary of state, the interception and intelligence services commissioners and the intelligence and security committee."
