I wonder what information they extracted from WoW. Lolz and uber-pwnage?
My guess is they wiretapped the network and when they needed to extract specific information they had an NSA player infiltrate the guild or became friends with the player until they got the info they needed.
I'm not surprised about Xbox Live, it's fully tapped by the NSA just like Skype.
So is your cell phone, home phone, personal emails, work emails etc etc. I think it's a joke when people are like "I'm not buying an xbox one cause the NSA will watch me" come on give up your phone, your emails, you tablets and computers, just a ridiculous thought process if you ask me.
I gave up my Cell phone for this. I never use email or other electronic media for any real life conversations that mean anything important. The more ways you reduce the NSA's ability to snoop on you, the better.
This is also the number one reason why I refuse to use FB or Twitter. Straight feed to the NSA.
I served aboard US FBM Submarines during the Cold War, to help our Country combat Soviet style Communism. I valued Liberty and Democracy and I felt (and still do) that the Peoples of the USSR deserved Freedom and a respectful government. I never hated the People of the Soviet Union, only their Government and how they operated.
Now I am more fearful of our OWN Government than I ever was of the Soviet Union.... the United States is fast becoming a worse "beast" than the Soviet Union ever thought of being..... and millions of People blindly see nothing wrong at all....
I am an American and a Patriot, but I am not a supporter of how the US Government has been doing business these last years.
I wonder what information they extracted from WoW. Lolz and uber-pwnage?
My guess is they wiretapped the network and when they needed to extract specific information they had an NSA player infiltrate the guild or became friends with the player until they got the info they needed.
I'm not surprised about Xbox Live, it's fully tapped by the NSA just like Skype.
It would not be so elaborate, or they really lost their mind on how to accomplish thier goals.
Why would they need to be there in person, if WoW is cooperating? They do not care about the actual game, but the interactions of players. That interaction is all text based... they dont care about griefers, or people who need on greed... but rather what they would say... who knows what they are looking for from all the text.
It could be Hackers, botters, gold farmers, and this illegal activity could be a lead to other things. Discussion about illegal activities, and telling authorities about it. Something like that, which is all text based, and with the cooperation of WoW, they do not need to be in game.
I have no problems with that happening, since I am sure hackers, and botters have access to more information than they should have. It makes it more secure for the players knowing that the government is involved and will persecute hackers and catch them. Hackers can do many things other than just using identity for identity theft, stealing money, but also stalking people as well without being obvious about it.
Of course, if the NSA are the hackers that take peoples accounts because they themselves play WoW, then its hopless... you have to have trust in the system I guess... and whos watching the watcher, when there is no real incentive for them to care about WoW customers that are 1 in 7 million. But, then again, thinking that NSA would be responsible is less likely than gold farmers doing it... so one is defintely better than the other, if you consider both bad... and NSA is not hiding their presence... so if there are hackers in WoW and they are stealing accounts it makes them look bad... and I guess thats the incentive right there...
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
I'm sure it was proposed by some World of Warcraft addict to get people on the virtual ground in those MMOs to "spy" (AKA play) these MMOs while getting paid for it at work.
Guess what? The big bad US gov't doesn't care about you.
Not everything is a conspiracy.
Could bad people or bad organizations conduct communications thu an MMO? Sure. Should people take a look at that, maybe? Sure. Did they likely find anything much, especially for the effort they put in? Probably not.
Should anyone care? No. (Unless you are one of those bad guys.)
People need to get a grip.
Sheep alert. Its not a conspiracy this is real life.
Originally posted by AIMonster I'm sure the NSA and GCHQ managed to get lots of useful information to help protect our national security from spying on us in MMOs. Last I heard the Horde are planning an attack on Stormwind and the Gnomes are secretly enriching uranium to build a nuclear bomb. You never know what those dragons might be up to either.
Let's imagine a simple scenario...
Some terrorists are planning a massive scale action during the upcoming Nelson Mandela burial, where 70+ chiefs of State will attend.
But they know mobile phones and regular Internet communications (eMail, MSN, Skype, etc...) are monitored.
They have a genius idea! They log into some random online game, and use the chat/guild features to communicate without anyone ever knowing about it!
And you can be sure that if it has been posted here, some of them already have had that idea and used it.
Why bother with undercover gamer espionage? Hide your terrorist ass out in the open where no one would suspect! You know, run for president or something like that... *cough cough cough*
Should anyone care? No. (Unless you are one of those bad guys.)
There are plenty of innocent people in jail to proof that others should care as well. To the very least be wary. However I agree somewhat with you. Terrorist do not live in caves without internet. They often have a home, internet and maybe they even addicted to WoW or play on the XboX. This might even be a good source to recruit people. NSA would do a bad job if they did not keep an information sources like that. They do not invade your privacy or whatever.
Especially second life! Let's say I want to tranfer money to a jihadist organisation. I could not just send them a check or do a direct transfer. I could however buy in game property for way to much money. This would be a lot harder to track, especially if the NSA does not keep there eye on such games.
Despite your rationalization, this is one step away from a dangerous tyranny.
I think it's a difficult job.
There are people who will go to the mat in order to cause terror (And I'm not saying the U.S. is blameless, we clearly have issues) and there are people who are hired to stop them.
Now imagine you are one of these people. You are fettered by what you can do, you probably cross the line more than once in order to follow a lead, everything needs to be taken deadly serious because if you mess up then thousands of lives (more? Millions?) might be lost.
It must be high pressured, highly monitored, you know you are going to make mistakes, and there is no easy and "good" way to do it.
It's not a job I would want.
And I wonder if the only people who take the job are the people we really want in the job? But maybe they are the only people who can do the job?
Maybe it ruins them in the process.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Guess what? The big bad US gov't doesn't care about you.
Not everything is a conspiracy.
Could bad people or bad organizations conduct communications thu an MMO? Sure. Should people take a look at that, maybe? Sure. Did they likely find anything much, especially for the effort they put in? Probably not.
Should anyone care? No. (Unless you are one of those bad guys.)
People need to get a grip.
Sheep alert. Its not a conspiracy this is real life.
You need to get a grip.
Let me say it again: THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU!
Even in the original article, if you bothered to read it, it mentioned that they went into some games when they had other information, that someone they were interested in, was in there.
And even further, the article mentioned that they didn't get much if anything, for all their efforts.
It is not like they were sucking down every chatlog from every server and going through it with a fine tooth comb. And then building a dossier on everyone that ever played the game? That is a bunch of paranoid crap.
It is possible and even likely that some "bad guys" somewhere could have been using WoW or some other game for covert/anonymous communications, and as such, it is perfectly fine to look into that. But it is not worth getting worked up over. The Feds get more from open Facebook and Twitter stuff.
I'm mostly surprised about the UK GCHQ. They are just as bad as the NSA in violating privacy rights. They wiretapped the EU in Brussels by hacking Belgacom and served as the country doing the dirty work for the US.
I'm surprised people in the UK are not more outraged at their politicians.
this is why I canceled my xbox live subscription, and I refuse to upgrade to xbox one.
throw out your cellphones, cancel Facebook, Twitter, your pc or any console you may have, refuse to use computers at work or at school, don't go out, security cams will follow you; best idea is to move into the mountains, build a cabin (never go out though because one of the 10k satellites might see you) and never speak because someone up in a tree might hear you.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
Originally posted by AIMonster I'm sure the NSA and GCHQ managed to get lots of useful information to help protect our national security from spying on us in MMOs. Last I heard the Horde are planning an attack on Stormwind and the Gnomes are secretly enriching uranium to build a nuclear bomb. You never know what those dragons might be up to either.
Let's imagine a simple scenario...
Some terrorists are planning a massive scale action during the upcoming Nelson Mandela burial, where 70+ chiefs of State will attend.
But they know mobile phones and regular Internet communications (eMail, MSN, Skype, etc...) are monitored.
They have a genius idea! They log into some random online game, and use the chat/guild features to communicate without anyone ever knowing about it!
And you can be sure that if it has been posted here, some of them already have had that idea and used it.
You guys watch too many movies. Who are these terrorists and how do you know what they are planning or how they communicate?
14 months overseas "fighting terrorists" and never once did any of us actually kill anyone with any identifying info that made them out to be "terrorists".
What we did find were people that didn't like us invading their country. Average goat farmers. They didn't use WoW to communicate with others, they used courier. Most couriers were little kids. Little kids would spot for RPG teams too. You know, the innocent ones they show in the news asking Marines for a "dolla", biscuit, or a pen? Yeah, those kids.
You terrorist experts crack me up. The government have you by the balls with false fear. I'm tired of my freedoms being rationalized away by the sheep.
Guess what? The big bad US gov't doesn't care about you.
Not everything is a conspiracy.
Could bad people or bad organizations conduct communications thu an MMO? Sure. Should people take a look at that, maybe? Sure. Did they likely find anything much, especially for the effort they put in? Probably not.
Should anyone care? No. (Unless you are one of those bad guys.)
People need to get a grip.
Sheep alert. Its not a conspiracy this is real life.
You need to get a grip.
Let me say it again: THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU!
Even in the original article, if you bothered to read it, it mentioned that they went into some games when they had other information, that someone they were interested in, was in there.
And even further, the article mentioned that they didn't get much if anything, for all their efforts.
It is not like they were sucking down every chatlog from every server and going through it with a fine tooth comb. And then building a dossier on everyone that ever played the game? That is a bunch of paranoid crap.
It is possible and even likely that some "bad guys" somewhere could have been using WoW or some other game for covert/anonymous communications, and as such, it is perfectly fine to look into that. But it is not worth getting worked up over. The Feds get more from open Facebook and Twitter stuff.
One of them is written right into the Bill of Rights that govern the precepts of the country - "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
um ... *raises hand* ... small point of order ... I'm not an American.
That constitution of yours is a nice document but I'm neither protected by it nor bound by it. So before you sort out everything by making appeals to your constitution, consider the fact that the US if just 5% of the population of an increasingly interconnected and interdepedant world and your internal spying problems are just a special case of a larger, more complicated problem of us *all* getting along and respecting each other.
Guess what? The big bad US gov't doesn't care about you.
Not everything is a conspiracy.
Could bad people or bad organizations conduct communications thu an MMO? Sure. Should people take a look at that, maybe? Sure. Did they likely find anything much, especially for the effort they put in? Probably not.
Should anyone care? No. (Unless you are one of those bad guys.)
People need to get a grip.
Sheep alert. Its not a conspiracy this is real life.
You need to get a grip.
Let me say it again: THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU!
Even in the original article, if you bothered to read it, it mentioned that they went into some games when they had other information, that someone they were interested in, was in there.
And even further, the article mentioned that they didn't get much if anything, for all their efforts.
It is not like they were sucking down every chatlog from every server and going through it with a fine tooth comb. And then building a dossier on everyone that ever played the game? That is a bunch of paranoid crap.
It is possible and even likely that some "bad guys" somewhere could have been using WoW or some other game for covert/anonymous communications, and as such, it is perfectly fine to look into that. But it is not worth getting worked up over. The Feds get more from open Facebook and Twitter stuff.
Guess what? The big bad US gov't doesn't care about you.
Not everything is a conspiracy.
Could bad people or bad organizations conduct communications thu an MMO? Sure. Should people take a look at that, maybe? Sure. Did they likely find anything much, especially for the effort they put in? Probably not.
Should anyone care? No. (Unless you are one of those bad guys.)
People need to get a grip.
Sheep alert. Its not a conspiracy this is real life.
You need to get a grip.
Let me say it again: THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU!
Even in the original article, if you bothered to read it, it mentioned that they went into some games when they had other information, that someone they were interested in, was in there.
And even further, the article mentioned that they didn't get much if anything, for all their efforts.
It is not like they were sucking down every chatlog from every server and going through it with a fine tooth comb. And then building a dossier on everyone that ever played the game? That is a bunch of paranoid crap.
It is possible and even likely that some "bad guys" somewhere could have been using WoW or some other game for covert/anonymous communications, and as such, it is perfectly fine to look into that. But it is not worth getting worked up over. The Feds get more from open Facebook and Twitter stuff.
This is all a big "Who Cares?".
Sheep Alert
More like old, former wolf.
A wolf refuses to be made cattle.
A wolf does not take kindly to being intruded upon.
Please don't make me wave a flag. I do love my country and what it should stand for.
Rest assured, I was not trying to troll your patriotism. I just wanted to point out that the issues and anxieties arising out of an intelligence arms race do not politely stop at borders.
I can actually see hackers and terrorists fund their activities through selling ingame gold.
I don't think this is too far fetched.
Originally posted by nethaniah
Seriously Farmville? Yeah I think it's great. In a World where half our population is dying of hunger the more fortunate half is spending their time harvesting food that doesn't exist.
Guess what? The big bad US gov't doesn't care about you.
Not everything is a conspiracy.
Could bad people or bad organizations conduct communications thu an MMO? Sure. Should people take a look at that, maybe? Sure. Did they likely find anything much, especially for the effort they put in? Probably not.
Should anyone care? No. (Unless you are one of those bad guys.)
People need to get a grip.
Sheep alert. Its not a conspiracy this is real life.
You need to get a grip.
Let me say it again: THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU!
Even in the original article, if you bothered to read it, it mentioned that they went into some games when they had other information, that someone they were interested in, was in there.
And even further, the article mentioned that they didn't get much if anything, for all their efforts.
It is not like they were sucking down every chatlog from every server and going through it with a fine tooth comb. And then building a dossier on everyone that ever played the game? That is a bunch of paranoid crap.
It is possible and even likely that some "bad guys" somewhere could have been using WoW or some other game for covert/anonymous communications, and as such, it is perfectly fine to look into that. But it is not worth getting worked up over. The Feds get more from open Facebook and Twitter stuff.
This is all a big "Who Cares?".
Sheep Alert
More like old, former wolf.
A wolf refuses to be made cattle.
A wolf does not take kindly to being intruded upon.
A sheep does not care.
Wolves know wolf behavior when they see it.
They know when to be concerned, and when not to be.
Dark times, and even darker coming. Just imagine what sort of control and power a government wields with such knowledge and spying power! It is not good. I am equally shocked to see how some people still feel this is harmless and doesn't concern them. The power of control and tightening around us from all sides now.
One does not built such power NOT to use it. The government agencies already collect private data with the idea to possibly blackmail people into coerce with them! Nobody has no secrets, anyone has some stuff he rather not want to be known to everyone, and in the end everyone will end up being afraid of spies and afraid what he may say can easily get him in trouble.
Just google for the news how many people have undergone houses being searched just because they made a joke or ordered the wrong stuff at Amazon. (Like some sort of closing cooking pot, just because in theory that cooking pot could be used as part of a bomb!)
Dark times ahead of fear, suspicion and oppression, that's what is coming.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
I'm more pissed off at the group of idiots who decided tonight during rush hour that keeping open all on-ramps and shutting down all but one off-ramp on the fifth most congested highway in the U.S. was a smart idea.
"I used to think the worst thing in life was to be all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone." Robin Williams
Comments
I gave up my Cell phone for this. I never use email or other electronic media for any real life conversations that mean anything important. The more ways you reduce the NSA's ability to snoop on you, the better.
This is also the number one reason why I refuse to use FB or Twitter. Straight feed to the NSA.
I served aboard US FBM Submarines during the Cold War, to help our Country combat Soviet style Communism. I valued Liberty and Democracy and I felt (and still do) that the Peoples of the USSR deserved Freedom and a respectful government. I never hated the People of the Soviet Union, only their Government and how they operated.
Now I am more fearful of our OWN Government than I ever was of the Soviet Union.... the United States is fast becoming a worse "beast" than the Soviet Union ever thought of being..... and millions of People blindly see nothing wrong at all....
I am an American and a Patriot, but I am not a supporter of how the US Government has been doing business these last years.
It would not be so elaborate, or they really lost their mind on how to accomplish thier goals.
Why would they need to be there in person, if WoW is cooperating? They do not care about the actual game, but the interactions of players. That interaction is all text based... they dont care about griefers, or people who need on greed... but rather what they would say... who knows what they are looking for from all the text.
It could be Hackers, botters, gold farmers, and this illegal activity could be a lead to other things. Discussion about illegal activities, and telling authorities about it. Something like that, which is all text based, and with the cooperation of WoW, they do not need to be in game.
I have no problems with that happening, since I am sure hackers, and botters have access to more information than they should have. It makes it more secure for the players knowing that the government is involved and will persecute hackers and catch them. Hackers can do many things other than just using identity for identity theft, stealing money, but also stalking people as well without being obvious about it.
Of course, if the NSA are the hackers that take peoples accounts because they themselves play WoW, then its hopless... you have to have trust in the system I guess... and whos watching the watcher, when there is no real incentive for them to care about WoW customers that are 1 in 7 million. But, then again, thinking that NSA would be responsible is less likely than gold farmers doing it... so one is defintely better than the other, if you consider both bad... and NSA is not hiding their presence... so if there are hackers in WoW and they are stealing accounts it makes them look bad... and I guess thats the incentive right there...
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
Sheep alert. Its not a conspiracy this is real life.
You need to get a grip.
Why bother with undercover gamer espionage? Hide your terrorist ass out in the open where no one would suspect! You know, run for president or something like that... *cough cough cough*
There are plenty of innocent people in jail to proof that others should care as well. To the very least be wary. However I agree somewhat with you. Terrorist do not live in caves without internet. They often have a home, internet and maybe they even addicted to WoW or play on the XboX. This might even be a good source to recruit people. NSA would do a bad job if they did not keep an information sources like that. They do not invade your privacy or whatever.
Especially second life! Let's say I want to tranfer money to a jihadist organisation. I could not just send them a check or do a direct transfer. I could however buy in game property for way to much money. This would be a lot harder to track, especially if the NSA does not keep there eye on such games.
I think it's a difficult job.
There are people who will go to the mat in order to cause terror (And I'm not saying the U.S. is blameless, we clearly have issues) and there are people who are hired to stop them.
Now imagine you are one of these people. You are fettered by what you can do, you probably cross the line more than once in order to follow a lead, everything needs to be taken deadly serious because if you mess up then thousands of lives (more? Millions?) might be lost.
It must be high pressured, highly monitored, you know you are going to make mistakes, and there is no easy and "good" way to do it.
It's not a job I would want.
And I wonder if the only people who take the job are the people we really want in the job? But maybe they are the only people who can do the job?
Maybe it ruins them in the process.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Let me say it again: THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU!
Even in the original article, if you bothered to read it, it mentioned that they went into some games when they had other information, that someone they were interested in, was in there.
And even further, the article mentioned that they didn't get much if anything, for all their efforts.
It is not like they were sucking down every chatlog from every server and going through it with a fine tooth comb. And then building a dossier on everyone that ever played the game? That is a bunch of paranoid crap.
It is possible and even likely that some "bad guys" somewhere could have been using WoW or some other game for covert/anonymous communications, and as such, it is perfectly fine to look into that. But it is not worth getting worked up over. The Feds get more from open Facebook and Twitter stuff.
This is all a big "Who Cares?".
I'm mostly surprised about the UK GCHQ. They are just as bad as the NSA in violating privacy rights. They wiretapped the EU in Brussels by hacking Belgacom and served as the country doing the dirty work for the US.
I'm surprised people in the UK are not more outraged at their politicians.
Ofcause they are watching, what have you expected.
They are working for you and me to protect our society.
Nothing wrong with that, i think.
Enjoy!
http://kotaku.com/the-daily-show-is-really-worried-about-nsa-spying-in-wo-1480350537
throw out your cellphones, cancel Facebook, Twitter, your pc or any console you may have, refuse to use computers at work or at school, don't go out, security cams will follow you; best idea is to move into the mountains, build a cabin (never go out though because one of the 10k satellites might see you) and never speak because someone up in a tree might hear you.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
You guys watch too many movies. Who are these terrorists and how do you know what they are planning or how they communicate?
14 months overseas "fighting terrorists" and never once did any of us actually kill anyone with any identifying info that made them out to be "terrorists".
What we did find were people that didn't like us invading their country. Average goat farmers. They didn't use WoW to communicate with others, they used courier. Most couriers were little kids. Little kids would spot for RPG teams too. You know, the innocent ones they show in the news asking Marines for a "dolla", biscuit, or a pen? Yeah, those kids.
You terrorist experts crack me up. The government have you by the balls with false fear. I'm tired of my freedoms being rationalized away by the sheep.
Sheep Alert
The answer is simple:
Kill all the politicians.
Total government transparency.
And data mining should be completely illegal.
um ... *raises hand* ... small point of order ... I'm not an American.
That constitution of yours is a nice document but I'm neither protected by it nor bound by it. So before you sort out everything by making appeals to your constitution, consider the fact that the US if just 5% of the population of an increasingly interconnected and interdepedant world and your internal spying problems are just a special case of a larger, more complicated problem of us *all* getting along and respecting each other.
More like old, former wolf.
A wolf refuses to be made cattle.
A wolf does not take kindly to being intruded upon.
A sheep does not care.
Rest assured, I was not trying to troll your patriotism. I just wanted to point out that the issues and anxieties arising out of an intelligence arms race do not politely stop at borders.
All the jokes aside but....
I can actually see hackers and terrorists fund their activities through selling ingame gold.
I don't think this is too far fetched.
Some are even more direct: there are a good number of games that have real money economies.
Someone sells something to someone else, halfway across the globe, and asks for a cash out.
Money sent to an anonymous paypal acct or equivalent and then to a bank acct or sent as a check.
Done.
Wolves know wolf behavior when they see it.
They know when to be concerned, and when not to be.
Dark times, and even darker coming. Just imagine what sort of control and power a government wields with such knowledge and spying power! It is not good. I am equally shocked to see how some people still feel this is harmless and doesn't concern them. The power of control and tightening around us from all sides now.
One does not built such power NOT to use it. The government agencies already collect private data with the idea to possibly blackmail people into coerce with them! Nobody has no secrets, anyone has some stuff he rather not want to be known to everyone, and in the end everyone will end up being afraid of spies and afraid what he may say can easily get him in trouble.
Just google for the news how many people have undergone houses being searched just because they made a joke or ordered the wrong stuff at Amazon. (Like some sort of closing cooking pot, just because in theory that cooking pot could be used as part of a bomb!)
Dark times ahead of fear, suspicion and oppression, that's what is coming.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert