U.S. Spies Want to Find Terrorists in World of Warcraft
Be careful who you frag. Having eliminated all terrorism in the real world, the U.S. intelligence community is working to develop software that will detect violent extremists infiltrating World of Warcraft and other massive multiplayer games, according to a data-mining report from the Director of National Intelligence.
The Reynard project will begin by profiling online gaming behavior, then potentially move on to its ultimate goal of “automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world.”
The cultural and behavioral norms of virtual worlds and gaming are generally unstudied. Therefore, Reynard will seek to identify the emerging social, behavioral and cultural norms in virtual worlds and gaming environments. The project would then apply the lessons learned to determine the feasibility of automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world.
If it shows early promise, this small seedling effort may increase its scope to a full project.
Reynard will conduct unclassified research in a public virtual world environment. The research will use publicly available data and will begin with observational studies to establish baseline normative behaviors.
Check out the unclassified version of the DNI’s report to Congress on data mining, which also covers such topics as Video Analysis and Content Extraction, Tangram, and Knowledge Discovery and Dissemination.
A couple of quotes from the document which will doubtless be comforting to readers of this blog follow.
Definition of “data mining.” The Data Mining Report Act defines”data mining” as “a program involving pattern-based queries, searches or other analyses of 1 or more electronic databases” in order to “discover or locate a predictive pattern or anomaly indicative of terrorist or criminal activity….”
recall the Panopticon Singularity article re: criminal activity?
The limitation to predictive, “pattern-based” data mining is significant because analysis performed within the ODNI and its constituent elements for counterterrorism and similar purposes is often performed using various types of link analysis tools. These tools start with a known or suspected terrorist or other subject of foreign intelligence interest and use various methods to uncover links between that known subject and potential associates or other persons with whom that subject is or has been in contact.
The Data Mining Reporting Act does not include such analyses within its definition of “data mining” because such analyses are not “pattern-based.” Rather, these analyses rely on inputting the “personal identifiers of a specific individual, or inputs associated with a specific individual or group of individuals,” which is excluded from the definition of “data mining” under the Act.
So… does that mean that if your name shows up among the nearly 1,000,000 names on the “watch list”, it doesn’t count as “data mining”?
Because application of results from these research projects may ultimately have implications for privacy and civil liberties, IARPA is also investing in projects that develop privacy protecting technologies
MAY ULTIMATELY HAVE IMPLICATIONS FOR??? how about we strike that phrase and replace it with “currently affect” and would YOU trust these people to develop “privacy protecting technologies” for your “protection”?
Tags: criminal activity, data mining, datamining, DNI, MMORPGs, Panopticon, privacy, Second Life, Sims, surveillance, terrorism, World of Warcraft
