The NSA and GCHQ sent spies into online games to seek out terrorist or criminal chat and even to recruit valuable informants such as foreign embassy drivers who happened to be players, according to newly leaked documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Intelligence operatives feared that games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft could be used to secretly communicate, move money or plot terrorist attacks, all under the radar of existing snooping abillity. The security agencies were already able to intercept emails and phone calls, but many online games were considered possible safe havens for illegal activity.
In response to that perceived threat spies created their own avatars and joined the games, logging communications between other players. According to leaked documents provided to The Guardian and shared with the New York Times and ProPublica, Second Life, Xbox Live and World of Warcraft were all targeted, potentially affecting tens of millions of users.
The New York Times reports that GCHQ had sent operatives into Second Life in 2008 and helped police in London break a ring of criminals that were selling stolen credit card information in the virtual world. Documents report that the sting was codenamed Operation Galician and was aided by an informer who “helpfully volunteered information on the target group’s latest activities”.
Other documents reportedly show that RAF Menwith Hill in Yorkshire was used as a base for American and British operatives to enter World of Warcraft using their own characters. The minutes of a meeting involving GCHQ’s “network gaming exploitation team” had identified engineers, embassy drivers and foreign intelligence operatives as players of the game – all possible targets for recruitment.
The Telegraph has the full article
