NSA SPYING ON GAMERS: MICROSOFT RESPONDS (Escapist New Now)

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NSA SPYING ON GAMERS: MICROSOFT RESPONDS (Escapist New Now)

The Guardian, the New York Times, and ProPublica and exposed an 82-page document that revealed the NSA and British Intelligence had been monitoring chat transcripts in Blizzard's World of Warcraft, Xbox Live, and avatar game Second Life.

According to ProPublica, these agencies feared, "terrorists 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."

Agents of each organization created characters in-game to try and snoop on other players and also to recruit informers while collecting data and communication between players. I'm going to shelve how I feel about that for a minute to tell you what Microsoft has officially said about this situation.

Speaking to Eurogamer, a spokesperson said, "We're not aware of any surveillance activity. If it has occurred as reported, it certainly wasn't done with our consent." Microsoft has now joined a jointly-authored document titled "Global Government Surveillance Reform" along with other companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter to curb mass surveillance, or at least limit what the government can monitor. They call for greater transparency and respect for the free flow of information.

Blizzard made similar statements about World of Warcraft, where GCHQ used exploitation modules to monitor players and metadata to link accounts, characters, and guilds to potential targets.

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