I love them negging on you. Do you think it is a paid human, or a bot?
I wish I could see the six redacted names.
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The SNOWDEN Saga continues...
- Thread starter gaiusmarius
- Start date
I love them negging on you. Do you think it is a paid human, or a bot?
I wish I could see the six redacted names.
MrDanky
Member
its probably my uncle stoner4life. 12k+ posts the guy never leaves this siteI love them negging on you. Do you think it is a paid human, or a bot?
I wish I could see the six redacted names.
LOL
I love them negging on you. Do you think it is a paid human, or a bot?
I wish I could see the six redacted names.
As far as I know, fro the Guardian, they are all islamist nutbags. Not that that makes this right, far from it. The implications for democracy are that democracy is fucked. How can the people ever rely on elected officials, knowing that these officials have probably got dirt in their background to be used as leverage.
That's why Obomba never made that hopey changey thing happen...because they NSA took him aside and said
"Shemales, midget bondage, watersports, fisting, and teen + milf lesbians, Tentacle Hentai and babysitter seduction. These are your preferred search terms on pornhub. Now, about that hopey changey thing you had planned."
"We've got your online personal ad on an extra-marital affairs site. BBC seeks BBW for evenings of DS, A-levels, BJ, BDSM finishing with a round of CIM/COFAH***"
***If CIM stands for cum in mouth, I'm sure you can figure out COFAH.
A U.S. person is entitled to greater legal protections against NSA surveillance than foreigners are.
Like What? A lawyer will be appointed to you if you can not afford one.
Like What? A lawyer will be appointed to you if you can not afford one.
You really aren't that interesting MrDanky, I DO NOT seek out your posts to see what you're saying. just to prove you're wrong I'll offer the screen shots below.
The only other way to prove I didn't neg rep you would be to K+ those same posts, and THAT ain't gonna happen.......
If I'd already neg repped you the option of 'Helpful ~ Unhelpful' (Yes~No) wouldn't be visible; instead it would say something like 'Thank you for voting on this post'.
btw 2 out 4 haters on that crap??? not too bad, I see you conspiracy crackpots have some other fans.
I stayed out of this shit for quite awhile but you dragged me back in to prove a point.
You have other haters to deal with, leave my name out of it MrDanky.
was un cool to accuse anyone specifically about the helpful or not vote. i know it can piss one off if one lets it, but in the end it's a form of free expression, 1 person, 1 vote, so who cares if there is some one out there who disagrees, you always get that, the art is in knowing how to agree to disagree. for the rest, posting about unhelpful votes will just encourage said entity to find more posts to vote unhelpful. it's a bit like the adage about feeding the trolls, feed them and they are sure to stick around, ignore them and they will go looking for other people to hassle some place else.
I just don't think they're going to figure it out in time.
The Internet was developed by the military. Need I say more?
The Internet was developed by the military. Need I say more?
So, now that Snowden let the cat out of the bag, these complicit tech firms all of a sudden care about our rights and privacy? Where was this concern when they made millions off of data requests? That's right, they only care about their bottom line, and they have even less incentive to tell the truth than our dear leader and government does.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/ameri...ssure-obama-over-nsa-2013121013140169598.html
Tech companies pressure Obama over NSA
Tech giants, including Google and Facebook, lash out at US government snooping agencies in an open letter.
Silicon Valley is escalating pressure on President Barack Obama to curb the United States government surveillance programmes that vacuum personal information off the Internet and threaten the technology industry's financial livelihood.
A coalition that includes Google, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook and Microsoft lashed out in an open letter printed on Monday in major newspapers and a new website,
http://reformgovernmentsurveillance.com.
The crusade united eight companies that often compete fiercely against each other, but now find themselves banding together to limit the potential damage from revelations about the National Security Agency's snooping on Web surfers.
Twitter, LinkedIn and AOL joined Google, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook and Microsoft in the push for tighter controls over electronic espionage.
As the companies' services and products have become more deeply ingrained in society, they have become integral cogs in the economy.
Their prosperity also provides them with the cash to pay for lobbyists and fund campaign contributions that sway public policy.
PR offensive
Monday's public relations offensive is a by-product of documents leaked over the past six months by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
The records reveal that the NSA has been obtaining emails and other personal data from major tech companies under secret court orders for the past five years and scooping up other data through unauthorised hacking into data centres.
Silicon Valley has been fighting back in the courts and in Congress as they seek reforms that would allow them to disclose more information about secret court orders.
Several of the companies are also introducing more encryption technology to shield their users' data from government spies and other prying eyes.
Monday's letter and the new anti-snooping website represent the technology industry's latest salvo in an attempt to counter any perception that they voluntarily give the government access to users' email and other sensitive information.
Although the campaign is ostensibly directed at governments around the world, the US is clearly the main target.
"The balance in many countries has tipped too far in favour of the state and away from the rights of the individual, rights that are enshrined in our Constitution," the letter said.
Civil liberties aren't the only thing at stake. One of the reasons the technology companies have become a rich vein for crime-fighting authorities is that they routinely store vast amounts of personal data as part of their efforts to tailor services and target advertising.
By analysing search requests, Web-surfing habits, social networking posts and even the content of emails, the companies are able to determine, for instance, the type of digital ads to show individual users.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/ameri...ssure-obama-over-nsa-2013121013140169598.html
Tech companies pressure Obama over NSA
Tech giants, including Google and Facebook, lash out at US government snooping agencies in an open letter.
Silicon Valley is escalating pressure on President Barack Obama to curb the United States government surveillance programmes that vacuum personal information off the Internet and threaten the technology industry's financial livelihood.
A coalition that includes Google, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook and Microsoft lashed out in an open letter printed on Monday in major newspapers and a new website,
http://reformgovernmentsurveillance.com.
The crusade united eight companies that often compete fiercely against each other, but now find themselves banding together to limit the potential damage from revelations about the National Security Agency's snooping on Web surfers.
Twitter, LinkedIn and AOL joined Google, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook and Microsoft in the push for tighter controls over electronic espionage.
As the companies' services and products have become more deeply ingrained in society, they have become integral cogs in the economy.
Their prosperity also provides them with the cash to pay for lobbyists and fund campaign contributions that sway public policy.
PR offensive
Monday's public relations offensive is a by-product of documents leaked over the past six months by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
The records reveal that the NSA has been obtaining emails and other personal data from major tech companies under secret court orders for the past five years and scooping up other data through unauthorised hacking into data centres.
Silicon Valley has been fighting back in the courts and in Congress as they seek reforms that would allow them to disclose more information about secret court orders.
Several of the companies are also introducing more encryption technology to shield their users' data from government spies and other prying eyes.
Monday's letter and the new anti-snooping website represent the technology industry's latest salvo in an attempt to counter any perception that they voluntarily give the government access to users' email and other sensitive information.
Although the campaign is ostensibly directed at governments around the world, the US is clearly the main target.
"The balance in many countries has tipped too far in favour of the state and away from the rights of the individual, rights that are enshrined in our Constitution," the letter said.
Civil liberties aren't the only thing at stake. One of the reasons the technology companies have become a rich vein for crime-fighting authorities is that they routinely store vast amounts of personal data as part of their efforts to tailor services and target advertising.
By analysing search requests, Web-surfing habits, social networking posts and even the content of emails, the companies are able to determine, for instance, the type of digital ads to show individual users.
and the saga continues.....i also read that he is to give testimony to the european parliament. we will see how that goes.
Edward Snowden voted Guardian person of the year 2013
Edward Snowden voted Guardian person of the year 2013
NSA whistleblower's victory, for exposing the scale of internet surveillance, follows that of Chelsea Manning last year
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/09/edward-snowden-voted-guardian-person-of-year-2013
For the second year in a row, a young American whistleblower alarmed at the unfettered and at times cynical deployment of power by the world's foremost superpower has been voted the Guardian's person of the year.
Edward Snowden, who leaked an estimated 200,000 files that exposed the extensive and intrusive nature of phone and internet surveillance and intelligence gathering by the US and its western allies, was the overwhelming choice of more than 2,000 people who voted.
The NSA whistleblower garnered 1,445 votes. In a distant second, from a list of 10 candidates chosen by Guardian writers and editors, came Marco Weber and Sini Saarela, the Greenpeace activists who spearheaded the oil rig protest over Russian Arctic drilling. They received 314 votes. Pope Francis gained 153 votes, narrowly ahead of blogger and anti-poverty campaigner Jack Monroe, who received 144. Snowden's victory was as decisive as Chelsea Manning's a year earlier.
It is strange to think now, but a little more than six months ago, virtually no one had heard of Snowden, and few people outside the US would have been able to identify what the initials NSA stood for. Though internet privacy was beginning to emerge as an issue, few people had any idea of the extent to which governments and their secretive auxiliaries were able to trawl, sift, collect and scrutinise the personal digital footprints of millions of private individuals.
All that changed in May when Snowden left Hawaii for Hong Kong, where he met Guardian journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, and independent film-maker Laura Poitras, and handed over materials that blew the lid on spying technologies, some of which were truly stranger than fiction: a dragnet programme to scoop up digital activities direct from the servers of the biggest US tech companies; a tap on fibreoptic cables to gather huge amounts of data flowing in and out of the UK; a computer program to vacuum up phone records of millions of Americans; a codebreaking effort to crack the encryption system that underpins the safety and security of the internet.
In so doing, Snowden transformed his life, and not for the better. Forced to go on the run, he ended up in Moscow where he now lives in a curious Julian Assange-like limbo, unable to leave Russia for fear of arrest, extradition to the US and a prosecution that would threaten a long jail sentence, if Manning's term of 35 years is anything to go by.
It is this personal sacrifice, as much as his revelations, that impressed most readers who voted for him.
"He gave his future for the sake of democratic values, transparency, and freedom," said Miriam Bergholz. Colin Walker wrote: "We need people like him to have the courage to forget about their own life in the cause of other people's freedom. Let's face it, his life is over as even if he goes back to the US he will face decades in prison and the personal sacrifice he has made is immense." One commenter, identifying themselves as "irememberamerica", said he voted for Snowden "for his extraordinary and exemplary courage, and the historic value of his daring act. At every step, he has displayed an astonishing integrity and presence of mind. He is a great American and international patriot."
Some readers felt that the actions of the Greenpeace activists were as brave, if not braver, than Snowden's.
"Facing jail, as Snowden does, for defending privacy is one thing," wrote CaptainGrey. "Facing injury or even death for defending the planet, as Greenpeace activists often do, is another entirely," he said, in casting a vote for Weber and Saarela.
Others put in a good word for the pope, Waris Dirie and Monroe.
Iriscepero wrote: "[I am voting for] Waris Dirie for her work concerning female genital mutilation. It's an awful, brutal way of controlling females that carries significant health risks and it needs to end. I don't feel the topic gets the attention it needs because of the nationalities that are usually involved in the practice."
Edward Snowden voted Guardian person of the year 2013
Edward Snowden voted Guardian person of the year 2013
NSA whistleblower's victory, for exposing the scale of internet surveillance, follows that of Chelsea Manning last year
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/09/edward-snowden-voted-guardian-person-of-year-2013
For the second year in a row, a young American whistleblower alarmed at the unfettered and at times cynical deployment of power by the world's foremost superpower has been voted the Guardian's person of the year.
Edward Snowden, who leaked an estimated 200,000 files that exposed the extensive and intrusive nature of phone and internet surveillance and intelligence gathering by the US and its western allies, was the overwhelming choice of more than 2,000 people who voted.
The NSA whistleblower garnered 1,445 votes. In a distant second, from a list of 10 candidates chosen by Guardian writers and editors, came Marco Weber and Sini Saarela, the Greenpeace activists who spearheaded the oil rig protest over Russian Arctic drilling. They received 314 votes. Pope Francis gained 153 votes, narrowly ahead of blogger and anti-poverty campaigner Jack Monroe, who received 144. Snowden's victory was as decisive as Chelsea Manning's a year earlier.
It is strange to think now, but a little more than six months ago, virtually no one had heard of Snowden, and few people outside the US would have been able to identify what the initials NSA stood for. Though internet privacy was beginning to emerge as an issue, few people had any idea of the extent to which governments and their secretive auxiliaries were able to trawl, sift, collect and scrutinise the personal digital footprints of millions of private individuals.
All that changed in May when Snowden left Hawaii for Hong Kong, where he met Guardian journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, and independent film-maker Laura Poitras, and handed over materials that blew the lid on spying technologies, some of which were truly stranger than fiction: a dragnet programme to scoop up digital activities direct from the servers of the biggest US tech companies; a tap on fibreoptic cables to gather huge amounts of data flowing in and out of the UK; a computer program to vacuum up phone records of millions of Americans; a codebreaking effort to crack the encryption system that underpins the safety and security of the internet.
In so doing, Snowden transformed his life, and not for the better. Forced to go on the run, he ended up in Moscow where he now lives in a curious Julian Assange-like limbo, unable to leave Russia for fear of arrest, extradition to the US and a prosecution that would threaten a long jail sentence, if Manning's term of 35 years is anything to go by.
It is this personal sacrifice, as much as his revelations, that impressed most readers who voted for him.
"He gave his future for the sake of democratic values, transparency, and freedom," said Miriam Bergholz. Colin Walker wrote: "We need people like him to have the courage to forget about their own life in the cause of other people's freedom. Let's face it, his life is over as even if he goes back to the US he will face decades in prison and the personal sacrifice he has made is immense." One commenter, identifying themselves as "irememberamerica", said he voted for Snowden "for his extraordinary and exemplary courage, and the historic value of his daring act. At every step, he has displayed an astonishing integrity and presence of mind. He is a great American and international patriot."
Some readers felt that the actions of the Greenpeace activists were as brave, if not braver, than Snowden's.
"Facing jail, as Snowden does, for defending privacy is one thing," wrote CaptainGrey. "Facing injury or even death for defending the planet, as Greenpeace activists often do, is another entirely," he said, in casting a vote for Weber and Saarela.
Others put in a good word for the pope, Waris Dirie and Monroe.
Iriscepero wrote: "[I am voting for] Waris Dirie for her work concerning female genital mutilation. It's an awful, brutal way of controlling females that carries significant health risks and it needs to end. I don't feel the topic gets the attention it needs because of the nationalities that are usually involved in the practice."
Xbox Live among game services targeted by US and UK spy agencies
Xbox Live among game services targeted by US and UK spy agencies
i think we all knew this was the case, but Snowden has delivered proof. check it out.
Xbox Live among game services targeted by US and UK spy agencies
NSA and GCHQ collect gamers' chats and deploy real-life
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/09/nsa-spies-online-games-world-warcraft-second-life
To the National Security Agency analyst writing a briefing to his superiors, the situation was clear: their current surveillance efforts were lacking something. The agency's impressive arsenal of cable taps and sophisticated hacking attacks was not enough. What it really needed was a horde of undercover Orcs.
That vision of spycraft sparked a concerted drive by the NSA and its UK sister agency GCHQ to infiltrate the massive communities playing online games, according to secret documents disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The files were obtained by the Guardian and are being published on Monday in partnership with the New York Times and ProPublica.
The agencies, the documents show, have built mass-collection capabilities against the Xbox Live console network, which has more than 48 million players. Real-life agents have been deployed into virtual realms, from those Orc hordes in World of Warcraft to the human avatars of Second Life. There were attempts, too, to recruit potential informants from the games' tech-friendly users.
Online gaming is big business, attracting tens of millions of users worldwide who inhabit their digital worlds as make-believe characters, living and competing with the avatars of other players. What the intelligence agencies feared, however, was that among these clans of elves and goblins, terrorists were lurking.
The NSA document, written in 2008 and titled Exploiting Terrorist Use of Games & Virtual Environments, stressed the risk of leaving games communities under-monitored, describing them as a "target-rich communications network" where intelligence targets could "hide in plain sight".
Games, the analyst wrote, "are an opportunity!". According to the briefing notes, so many different US intelligence agents were conducting operations inside games that a "deconfliction" group was required to ensure they weren't spying on, or interfering with, each other.
If properly exploited, games could produce vast amounts of intelligence, according to the NSA document. They could be used as a window for hacking attacks, to build pictures of people's social networks through "buddylists and interaction", to make approaches by undercover agents, and to obtain target identifiers (such as profile photos), geolocation, and collection of communications.
The ability to extract communications from talk channels in games would be necessary, the NSA paper argued, because of the potential for them to be used to communicate anonymously: Second Life was enabling anonymous texts and planning to introduce voice calls, while game noticeboards could, it states, be used to share information on the web addresses of terrorism forums.
Given that gaming consoles often include voice headsets, video cameras, and other identifiers, the potential for joining together biometric information with activities was also an exciting one.
But the documents contain no indication that the surveillance ever foiled any terrorist plots, nor is there any clear evidence that terror groups were using the virtual communities to communicate as the intelligence agencies predicted.
The operations raise concerns about the privacy of gamers. It is unclear how the agencies accessed their data, or how many communications were collected. Nor is it clear how the NSA ensured that it was not monitoring innocent Americans whose identity and nationality may have been concealed behind their virtual avatar.
The California-based producer of World of Warcraft said neither the NSA nor GCHQ had sought its permission to gather intelligence inside the game. "We are unaware of any surveillance taking place," said a spokesman for Blizzard Entertainment. "If it was, it would have been done without our knowledge or permission."
Microsoft declined to comment on the latest revelations, as did Philip Rosedale, the founder of Second Life and former CEO of Linden Lab, the game's operator. The company's executives did not respond to requests for comment.
The NSA declined to comment on the surveillance of games. A spokesman for GCHQ said the agency did not "confirm or deny" the revelations but added: "All GCHQ's work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that its activities are authorised, 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."
Though the spy agencies might have been relatively late to virtual worlds and the communities forming there, once the idea had been mooted, they joined in enthusiastically.
In May 2007, the then-chief operating officer of Second Life gave a "brown-bag lunch" address at the NSA explaining how his game gave the government "the opportunity to understand the motivation, context and consequent behaviours of non-Americans through observation, without leaving US soil".
One problem the paper's unnamed author and others in the agency faced in making their case – and avoiding suspicion that their goal was merely to play computer games at work without getting fired – was the difficulty of proving terrorists were even thinking about using games to communicate.
A 2007 invitation to a secret internal briefing noted "terrorists use online games – but perhaps not for their amusement. They are suspected of using them to communicate secretly and to transfer funds." But the agencies had no evidence to support their suspicions.
The same still seemed to hold true a year later, albeit with a measure of progress: games data that had been found in connection with internet protocol addresses, email addresses and similar information linked to terrorist groups.
"Al-Qaida terrorist target selectors and … have been found associated with Xbox Live, Second Life, World of Warcraft, and other GVEs [games and virtual environments]," the document notes. "Other targets include Chinese hackers, an Iranian nuclear scientist, Hizballah, and Hamas members."
However, that information wasn not enough to show terrorists are hiding out as pixels to discuss their next plot. Such data could merely mean someone else in an internet cafe was gaming, or a shared computer had previously been used to play games.
That lack of knowledge of whether terrorists were actually plotting online emerges in the document's recommendations: "The amount of GVEs in the world is growing but the specific ones that CT [counter-terrorism] needs to be methodically discovered and validated," it stated. "Only then can we find evidence that GVEs are being used for operational uses."
Not actually knowing whether terrorists were playing games was not enough to keep the intelligence agencies out of them, however. According to the document, GCHQ had already made a "vigorous effort" to exploit games, including "exploitation modules" against Xbox Live and World of Warcraft.
That effort, based in the agency's New Mission Development Centre in the Menwith Hill air force base in North Yorkshire, was already paying dividends by May 2008.
At the request of GCHQ, the NSA had begun a deliberate effort to extract World of Warcraft metadata from their troves of intelligence, and trying to link "accounts, characters and guilds" to Islamic extremism and arms dealing efforts. A later memo noted that among the game's active subscribers were "telecom engineers, embassy drivers, scientists, the military and other intelligence agencies".
The UK agency did not stop at World of Warcraft: by September a memo noted GCHQ had "successfully been able to get the discussions between different game players on Xbox Live".
Meanwhile, the FBI, CIA, and the Defense Humint Service were all running human intelligence operations – undercover agents – within Second Life. In fact, so crowded were the virtual worlds with staff from the different agencies, that there was a need to try to "deconflict" their efforts – or, in other words, to make sure each agency wasn't just duplicating what the others were doing.
By the end of 2008, such efforts had produced at least one usable piece of intelligence, according to the documents: following the successful takedown of a website used to trade stolen credit card details, the fraudsters moved to Second Life – and GCHQ followed, having gained their first "operational deployment" into the virtual world. This, they noted, put them in touch with an "avatar [game character] who helpfully volunteered information on the target group's latest activities".
Second Life continued to occupy the intelligence agencies' thoughts throughout 2009. One memo noted the game's economy was "essentially unregulated" and so "will almost certainly be used as a venue for terrorist laundering and will, with certainty, be used for terrorist propaganda and recruitment".
In reality, Second Life's surreal and uneven virtual world failed to attract or maintain the promised mass-audience, and attention (and its user base) waned, though the game lives on.
The agencies had other concerns about games, beyond their potential use by terrorists to communicate. Much like the pressure groups that worry about the effect of computer games on the minds of children, the NSA expressed concerns that games could be used to "reinforce prejudices and cultural stereotypes", noting that Hezbollah had produced a game called Special Forces 2.
According to the document, Hezbollah's "press section acknowledges [the game] is used for recruitment and training", serving as a "radicalising medium" with the ultimate goal of becoming a "suicide martyr". Despite the game's disturbing connotations, the "fun factor" of the game cannot be discounted, it states. As Special Forces 2 retails for $10, it concludes, the game also serves to "fund terrorist operations".
Hezbollah is not, however, the only organisation to have considered using games for recruiting. As the NSA document acknowledges: they got the idea from the US army.
"America's Army is a US army-produced game that is free [to] download from its recruitment page," says the NSA, noting the game is "acknowledged to be so good at this the army no longer needs to use it for recruitment, they use it for training".
Xbox Live among game services targeted by US and UK spy agencies
i think we all knew this was the case, but Snowden has delivered proof. check it out.
Xbox Live among game services targeted by US and UK spy agencies
NSA and GCHQ collect gamers' chats and deploy real-life
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/09/nsa-spies-online-games-world-warcraft-second-life
To the National Security Agency analyst writing a briefing to his superiors, the situation was clear: their current surveillance efforts were lacking something. The agency's impressive arsenal of cable taps and sophisticated hacking attacks was not enough. What it really needed was a horde of undercover Orcs.
That vision of spycraft sparked a concerted drive by the NSA and its UK sister agency GCHQ to infiltrate the massive communities playing online games, according to secret documents disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The files were obtained by the Guardian and are being published on Monday in partnership with the New York Times and ProPublica.
The agencies, the documents show, have built mass-collection capabilities against the Xbox Live console network, which has more than 48 million players. Real-life agents have been deployed into virtual realms, from those Orc hordes in World of Warcraft to the human avatars of Second Life. There were attempts, too, to recruit potential informants from the games' tech-friendly users.
Online gaming is big business, attracting tens of millions of users worldwide who inhabit their digital worlds as make-believe characters, living and competing with the avatars of other players. What the intelligence agencies feared, however, was that among these clans of elves and goblins, terrorists were lurking.
The NSA document, written in 2008 and titled Exploiting Terrorist Use of Games & Virtual Environments, stressed the risk of leaving games communities under-monitored, describing them as a "target-rich communications network" where intelligence targets could "hide in plain sight".
Games, the analyst wrote, "are an opportunity!". According to the briefing notes, so many different US intelligence agents were conducting operations inside games that a "deconfliction" group was required to ensure they weren't spying on, or interfering with, each other.
If properly exploited, games could produce vast amounts of intelligence, according to the NSA document. They could be used as a window for hacking attacks, to build pictures of people's social networks through "buddylists and interaction", to make approaches by undercover agents, and to obtain target identifiers (such as profile photos), geolocation, and collection of communications.
The ability to extract communications from talk channels in games would be necessary, the NSA paper argued, because of the potential for them to be used to communicate anonymously: Second Life was enabling anonymous texts and planning to introduce voice calls, while game noticeboards could, it states, be used to share information on the web addresses of terrorism forums.
Given that gaming consoles often include voice headsets, video cameras, and other identifiers, the potential for joining together biometric information with activities was also an exciting one.
But the documents contain no indication that the surveillance ever foiled any terrorist plots, nor is there any clear evidence that terror groups were using the virtual communities to communicate as the intelligence agencies predicted.
The operations raise concerns about the privacy of gamers. It is unclear how the agencies accessed their data, or how many communications were collected. Nor is it clear how the NSA ensured that it was not monitoring innocent Americans whose identity and nationality may have been concealed behind their virtual avatar.
The California-based producer of World of Warcraft said neither the NSA nor GCHQ had sought its permission to gather intelligence inside the game. "We are unaware of any surveillance taking place," said a spokesman for Blizzard Entertainment. "If it was, it would have been done without our knowledge or permission."
Microsoft declined to comment on the latest revelations, as did Philip Rosedale, the founder of Second Life and former CEO of Linden Lab, the game's operator. The company's executives did not respond to requests for comment.
The NSA declined to comment on the surveillance of games. A spokesman for GCHQ said the agency did not "confirm or deny" the revelations but added: "All GCHQ's work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that its activities are authorised, 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."
Though the spy agencies might have been relatively late to virtual worlds and the communities forming there, once the idea had been mooted, they joined in enthusiastically.
In May 2007, the then-chief operating officer of Second Life gave a "brown-bag lunch" address at the NSA explaining how his game gave the government "the opportunity to understand the motivation, context and consequent behaviours of non-Americans through observation, without leaving US soil".
One problem the paper's unnamed author and others in the agency faced in making their case – and avoiding suspicion that their goal was merely to play computer games at work without getting fired – was the difficulty of proving terrorists were even thinking about using games to communicate.
A 2007 invitation to a secret internal briefing noted "terrorists use online games – but perhaps not for their amusement. They are suspected of using them to communicate secretly and to transfer funds." But the agencies had no evidence to support their suspicions.
The same still seemed to hold true a year later, albeit with a measure of progress: games data that had been found in connection with internet protocol addresses, email addresses and similar information linked to terrorist groups.
"Al-Qaida terrorist target selectors and … have been found associated with Xbox Live, Second Life, World of Warcraft, and other GVEs [games and virtual environments]," the document notes. "Other targets include Chinese hackers, an Iranian nuclear scientist, Hizballah, and Hamas members."
However, that information wasn not enough to show terrorists are hiding out as pixels to discuss their next plot. Such data could merely mean someone else in an internet cafe was gaming, or a shared computer had previously been used to play games.
That lack of knowledge of whether terrorists were actually plotting online emerges in the document's recommendations: "The amount of GVEs in the world is growing but the specific ones that CT [counter-terrorism] needs to be methodically discovered and validated," it stated. "Only then can we find evidence that GVEs are being used for operational uses."
Not actually knowing whether terrorists were playing games was not enough to keep the intelligence agencies out of them, however. According to the document, GCHQ had already made a "vigorous effort" to exploit games, including "exploitation modules" against Xbox Live and World of Warcraft.
That effort, based in the agency's New Mission Development Centre in the Menwith Hill air force base in North Yorkshire, was already paying dividends by May 2008.
At the request of GCHQ, the NSA had begun a deliberate effort to extract World of Warcraft metadata from their troves of intelligence, and trying to link "accounts, characters and guilds" to Islamic extremism and arms dealing efforts. A later memo noted that among the game's active subscribers were "telecom engineers, embassy drivers, scientists, the military and other intelligence agencies".
The UK agency did not stop at World of Warcraft: by September a memo noted GCHQ had "successfully been able to get the discussions between different game players on Xbox Live".
Meanwhile, the FBI, CIA, and the Defense Humint Service were all running human intelligence operations – undercover agents – within Second Life. In fact, so crowded were the virtual worlds with staff from the different agencies, that there was a need to try to "deconflict" their efforts – or, in other words, to make sure each agency wasn't just duplicating what the others were doing.
By the end of 2008, such efforts had produced at least one usable piece of intelligence, according to the documents: following the successful takedown of a website used to trade stolen credit card details, the fraudsters moved to Second Life – and GCHQ followed, having gained their first "operational deployment" into the virtual world. This, they noted, put them in touch with an "avatar [game character] who helpfully volunteered information on the target group's latest activities".
Second Life continued to occupy the intelligence agencies' thoughts throughout 2009. One memo noted the game's economy was "essentially unregulated" and so "will almost certainly be used as a venue for terrorist laundering and will, with certainty, be used for terrorist propaganda and recruitment".
In reality, Second Life's surreal and uneven virtual world failed to attract or maintain the promised mass-audience, and attention (and its user base) waned, though the game lives on.
The agencies had other concerns about games, beyond their potential use by terrorists to communicate. Much like the pressure groups that worry about the effect of computer games on the minds of children, the NSA expressed concerns that games could be used to "reinforce prejudices and cultural stereotypes", noting that Hezbollah had produced a game called Special Forces 2.
According to the document, Hezbollah's "press section acknowledges [the game] is used for recruitment and training", serving as a "radicalising medium" with the ultimate goal of becoming a "suicide martyr". Despite the game's disturbing connotations, the "fun factor" of the game cannot be discounted, it states. As Special Forces 2 retails for $10, it concludes, the game also serves to "fund terrorist operations".
Hezbollah is not, however, the only organisation to have considered using games for recruiting. As the NSA document acknowledges: they got the idea from the US army.
"America's Army is a US army-produced game that is free [to] download from its recruitment page," says the NSA, noting the game is "acknowledged to be so good at this the army no longer needs to use it for recruitment, they use it for training".
NSA uses Google cookies to pinpoint targets for hacking
By Ashkan Soltani, Andrea Peterson, and Barton Gellman
December 10 at 8:50 pm
The National Security Agency is secretly piggybacking on the tools that enable Internet advertisers to track consumers, using "cookies" and location data to pinpoint targets for government hacking and to bolster surveillance.
The agency's internal presentation slides, provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, show that when companies follow consumers on the Internet to better serve them advertising, the technique opens the door for similar tracking by the government. The slides also suggest that the agency is using these tracking techniques to help identify targets for offensive hacking operations.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...ogle-cookies-to-pinpoint-targets-for-hacking/
By Ashkan Soltani, Andrea Peterson, and Barton Gellman
December 10 at 8:50 pm
The National Security Agency is secretly piggybacking on the tools that enable Internet advertisers to track consumers, using "cookies" and location data to pinpoint targets for government hacking and to bolster surveillance.
The agency's internal presentation slides, provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, show that when companies follow consumers on the Internet to better serve them advertising, the technique opens the door for similar tracking by the government. The slides also suggest that the agency is using these tracking techniques to help identify targets for offensive hacking operations.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...ogle-cookies-to-pinpoint-targets-for-hacking/
It seems those poor wickle darlings at the NSA, are a bit sad in the pants, now that nasty Mr Ed has dished the dirt on their misdeeds.....
1st 2 paragraphs for the non-clickers....
Morale has taken a hit at the National Security Agency in the wake of controversy over the agency’s surveillance activities, according to former officials who say they are dismayed that President Obama has not visited the agency to show his support.
A White House spokeswoman, Caitlin Hayden, noted that top White House officials have been to the agency to “express the president’s support and appreciation for all that NSA does to keep us safe.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...l?Post+generic=?tid=sm_twitter_washingtonpost
1st 2 paragraphs for the non-clickers....
Morale has taken a hit at the National Security Agency in the wake of controversy over the agency’s surveillance activities, according to former officials who say they are dismayed that President Obama has not visited the agency to show his support.
A White House spokeswoman, Caitlin Hayden, noted that top White House officials have been to the agency to “express the president’s support and appreciation for all that NSA does to keep us safe.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...l?Post+generic=?tid=sm_twitter_washingtonpost
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firehound
Member
http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/6/5...vists-want-to-shut-off-the-water-to-the-nsa,s / It all comes down to the basics of life. ELECTRICITY,WATER...ah the simple life
Good read, but he's got one thing wrong, right at the start. The object is not to predict our behaviour and identify those who would harm us. That is the justification they give for it, but the purpose is to permanently protect the staus quo, and make it nigh on impossible for any grass roots movement for real change to ever organise against the entrenched interests.
Judge Napolitano is such a great man, he brings it to a sharp point, the right to be left the fuck alone! that was the American dream, not the rat race they call the American dream today.
Americans are all supposed to be kings in their own right! each man and woman unassailable as long as he/she doesn't infringe on an others rights.
now you have petty bureaucrats and angry policy enforcers trespassing on you in every way possible, all of them with a swollen sense of self importance and a total disregard for the constitution or your basic human rights. instead of respecting you as a sovereign being, they hound you, and harass you and suck the very life blood out of you.
it is indeed incredible how such a great experiment in true freedom could end up worse then the tyranny it defeated in the first place.
Americans are all supposed to be kings in their own right! each man and woman unassailable as long as he/she doesn't infringe on an others rights.
now you have petty bureaucrats and angry policy enforcers trespassing on you in every way possible, all of them with a swollen sense of self importance and a total disregard for the constitution or your basic human rights. instead of respecting you as a sovereign being, they hound you, and harass you and suck the very life blood out of you.
it is indeed incredible how such a great experiment in true freedom could end up worse then the tyranny it defeated in the first place.
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You're right but he is not wrong, he knows better. I think he was playing the cards he was given by following the narrative of the establishment and fox "news" ,by pretending the enemy is everywhere in the public.
He lost freedom watch, his old show, already for speaking out in that and other forums he's just playing it safe.
He knows what's going on.
