From the I can't believe it's not a joke file: "the U.S. intelligence community is working to develop software that will detect violent extremists infiltrating World of Warcraft and other massive multiplayer games, according to a data-mining report from the Director of National Intelligence."
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Silly Season
12 Mar 2008 02:59 pm
Comments (24)
Deep in the bowels of Langley, someone shouts, "All your base are belong to us!"
It's really just a giant gold-farming 'bot.
See Blizzard this is what happens when you make the game to casual friendly. Remove welfare epics!
Honestly, I'm not surprised. Nor do I think this is a bad idea in principle. MMOs are an emerging means of creating/ maintaining human networks which by their very nature are more difficult to monitor than a traditional IRC channel or e-mail network. Reading some tea leaves, I'd guess that in small number of years meeting up in a virtual world will seems as normal as meeting anywhere in person.
"We believe that this Dark Elf with +2 sword presents a dire threat to the security of the United States..."
Caliph Scorpidsting yells: Allah Akbar! Death to the Goblins!
Ok, someone insert that Southpark video here. Live to win! Til you die! Live to win!
We have reliable evidence that the blood elves are developing mana bomb technology and, in fact, have already deployed it in combat against the city of Cenarion Enclave. If we do not act now to invade the Blood Elf stronghold of Zul'Aman, our next warning may come in the form of a huge, red-skinned demon crushing our lands.
Actually, this makes sense. Many online games have a terrorism problem. Look up "Second Life griefers" for examples.
If you want to work on detecting terrorists via behavioral profiling, it sounds like a good laboratory. The question is whether a griefer hangs around long enough to generate useful data.
What will they do with them when they find them?
violent extremists
I believe the professional term is "chaotic evil".
Leroooooooooooooooooy Jenkinnnnnnnnnssssssssssss
Oops. I wandered into the nerd thread.
You know, this might not be totally crazy. We know that Al Qaeda has communicated through coded messages on various websites. What's to stop them from communicating through MMPGs or whatever the fuck they're called?
PREDATOR DRONE PILOT 01: [Enters] Osama We Are In Yr Bases Killin Yr d00dz
PREDATOR DRONE PILOT 02: Dude -- isn't that from Starcraft?
PREDATOR DRONE PILOT 01: Aw, crap.
@Anonymous
Damn! That was mine.
Some people who play those games are rude and antisocial, but I don't know that they'd be more likely to engage in actual criminal activity than, say, a typical message-board troll.
In terms of trying to recruit potential terrorists, those games would be a terrible way to do it. You have no idea who you're talking to, and things tend not to stay secret.
Ye gods. Does no one actually bother to follow Matt's links?
The project isn't about finding real-world terrorists. The point is to see if virtual world terrorists are detectable by virtual world behavioral cues And after that, there's a hope that you could apply the same principles to detect real terrorists.
I wouldn't be surprised if there're a few money-laundering setups out there that pass through WoW gold at some point.
The Reynard project will begin by profiling online gaming behavior, then potentially move on to its ultimate goal of "automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world."It makes a lot more sense if you imagine Summer Glau or Linda Hamilton saying it.
the U.S. intelligence community is working to develop software that will detect violent extremists infiltrating World of Warcraft
Isn't the IRS also trying to tax people who make a lot of Gold pieces (or whatever) in Warcraft?
I can readily picture the guys at the NSA who thought this up: "Sir! It will require me to play World of Warcraft all day, Sir! And all night! But I am ready to make the sacrifice!"
I'm not sure how applicable the info will be, but I suppose it could be worth a shot. And the spec about holding covert(ish) meetings there actually makes sense, and I can't wait for the movie where they try to do that while random red elves or whatever occasionally storm through.
"The Reynard project will begin by profiling online gaming behavior, then potentially move on to its ultimate goal of 'automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world.'"
It's just another idiotic way to piss away taxpayer money. If they had any brains, they'd just make an expert system based on the instincts of beat cops with twenty-year careers at detecting "suspicious behavior." It's unlikely that suspicious behavior in a virtual world differs significantly from that in the real world.
"It makes a lot more sense if you imagine Summer Glau or Linda Hamilton saying it."
Nah. Summer would just say, "That red elf must be killed". And when Sarah doesn't do it, later it becomes, "You should have killed him when you had the chance." Then it becomes, "Do I have to kill you next?"
Then she'd stuff some high school kid in the trunk of a car because he asked her to go to the prom with him. That kid Morris is too dumb to live. I'm really, really hoping she takes him out.
But the writers probably won't allow it because they're trying to minimize the number of people she kills because she's the "good" Terminator. That's why you didn't see her kill that thug's henchman, or beat up the cop and steal the uniform she was wearing. Although I was surprised they let her let the Russian Mafia waste Dmitri and his sister, especially after she kicked the crap out of one of them earlier.
Hopefully she'll get a little meaner now that Sarkissian has blown her up in the car. His ass is grass, we can count on that. Or maybe he'll be the first guy John kills - that would be interesting and appropriate. Especially since Derek mentioned that he thought Sarah has never killed anyone before, despite the "murder in her eyes all the time".
Comments closed March 26, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Hogger is a one-gnoll sleeper cell.
Posted by phil | March 12, 2008 3:07 PM