Verizon Customer?

[senorsheep]

NSA spying on... World of Warcraft???!!!

Linky - Spies’ Dragnet Reaches A Playing Field Of Elves And Trolls

Not limiting their activities to the earthly realm, American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life, conducting surveillance and scooping up data in the online games played by millions of people across the globe, according to newly disclosed classified documents.

Fearing that terrorist or criminal networks could use the games to communicate secretly, move money or plot attacks, the documents show, intelligence operatives have entered terrain populated by digital avatars that include elves, gnomes and supermodels.

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.

Online games might seem innocuous, a top-secret 2008 N.S.A. document warned, but they had the potential to be a “target-rich communication network” allowing intelligence suspects “a way to hide in plain sight.” Virtual games “are an opportunity!” another 2008 N.S.A. document declared.

Is there any actual evidence that any of this is happening? Eh, who cares, so long as the NSA fears it could happen because the potential exists, that's good enough. No, no overreach here, nothing to worry about, move along.

How does our president get away with this, pretending he's powerless to do anything to rein it in? Unreal...

[johnnya24]

Shows how far they are willing to go in order to see everything that is communicated online. Things like this make it completely farcical when they say they don't read or store peoples communications. By 2008 they'd already taken things to next level.

... not to mention the basic fact that it's completely ineffective at catching terrorists. I mean completely. In fact it has the opposite effect. These days criminals and terrorists just need to keep a nice clean digital profile, and conduct all communications using old fashioned methods. All they need to do is stick a stamp on a letter and the intelligence community will be flummoxed.

Terrorists keep a clean digital profile!! OMG!! The only way we will catch them is to hoover up everyone with a clean digital profile!! PANIC PANIC ... bullshit.

Population control. It's amazing how accurate science fiction writers have been.

[The Feral Slasher]

NSA spying on... World of Warcraft???!!!

Linky - Spies’ Dragnet Reaches A Playing Field Of Elves And Trolls



Is there any actual evidence that any of this is happening? Eh, who cares, so long as the NSA fears it could happen because the potential exists, that's good enough. No, no overreach here, nothing to worry about, move along.

How does our president get away with this, pretending he's powerless to do anything to rein it in? Unreal...

Uhhh....pretty sure Elves and Trolls are not U.S. citizens and not protected by the Constitution. And the first time there is a large scale orc attack in the United States you can be sure the Republicans would use it to criticize Obama.

[chancellor]

Is there any actual evidence that any of this is happening? Eh, who cares, so long as the NSA fears it could happen because the potential exists, that's good enough. No, no overreach here, nothing to worry about, move along.

As is typical, the NSA is about 3-5 years behind. At least two thinktanks discussed the potential for terrorists/jihadi using Second Life all the way back in 2008, and Dean Takahashi of Foreign Policy put out a short article on it in 2010. FP article - http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article....e1FirgYE.dpbs

That being said, fraudulent financial transactions and money laundering has been done through Second Life - I know of at least two Russians busted back in 2010. Dunno if WOW or any of the other games had that issue or not. Given that, I could see individual warrants on specific accounts, but all of them....nyet.

[johnnya24]

As is typical, the NSA is about 3-5 years behind. At least two thinktanks discussed the potential for terrorists/jihadi using Second Life all the way back in 2008, and Dean Takahashi of Foreign Policy put out a short article on it in 2010. FP article - http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article....e1FirgYE.dpbs

That being said, fraudulent financial transactions and money laundering has been done through Second Life - I know of at least two Russians busted back in 2010. Dunno if WOW or any of the other games had that issue or not. Given that, I could see individual warrants on specific accounts, but all of them....nyet.

That is from a 2008 document I believe.

[johnnya24]

Now this ... completely disgusting. Welcome to 1984.

UK spy agency intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users

Britain's surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal.

GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not.

In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam imagery – including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications – from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally.

Yahoo reacted furiously to the webcam interception when approached by the Guardian. The company denied any prior knowledge of the program, accusing the agencies of "a whole new level of violation of our users' privacy".

[johnnya24]

Taking us back to the beginning of this thread ...

NSA general counsel Rajesh De says big tech companies like Yahoo and Google provided ‘full assistance’ in legally mandated collection of data

The senior lawyer for the National Security Agency stated on Wednesday that US technology companies were fully aware of the surveillance agency’s widespread collection of data.

Rajesh De, the NSA general counsel, said all communications content and associated metadata harvested by the NSA under a 2008 surveillance law occurred with the knowledge of the companies – both for the internet collection program known as Prism and for the so-called “upstream” collection of communications moving across the internet.

Asked during a Wednesday hearing of the US government’s institutional privacy watchdog if collection under the law, known as Section 702 or the Fisa Amendments Act, occurred with the “full knowledge and assistance of any company from which information is obtained,” De replied: “Yes.”

All of the companies involved denied any knowledge of the data harvesting.

[chancellor]

Taking us back to the beginning of this thread ...

NSA general counsel Rajesh De says big tech companies like Yahoo and Google provided ‘full assistance’ in legally mandated collection of data



All of the companies involved denied any knowledge of the data harvesting.

Of course they did. OTOH, the NY Times had a good article on how it's hurt US tech businesses.

[johnnya24]

Of course they did. OTOH, the NY Times had a good article on how it's hurt US tech businesses.

I can imagine. Put yourself in the position of an international company ... how can they trust the big US firms with their data when they cannot protect it from FISA court orders? Especially since the NSA has also been seriously implicated in industrial espionage against foreign companies.

I'd like to know how much of a fight Silicon Valley put up. I'd also like to know what they think about being dropped in it by the NSA.

[The Feral Slasher]

bump...lol, this seems so long ago