Bill Moyers Journal reports on government proposals to spy on… your Warcraft and Second Life activity:
What is weird about the WoW footage in the piece is that it features AQ events stuff, which is from several years ago. Guess that was the only file footage they had.
4tehlulz
im in ur wow cl4n, speyeing 0n u
Batocchio
Jeez. Sad, but not surprising. But you know, the Pentagon couldn’t be too careful about those vegetarian lesbians they were spying on, and they can’t take any chances with those subversive gamer types, who could be talking about pwning their government with their uber-133t activist skillz and rank 5 Frost Shock.
Meanwhile, John McCain is befuddled by the young folks and their texting, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the DOJ soon launched an investigation into the influence of that devil music, rock and roll.
jake
Most original excuse to play on the Internons at work.
yet another jeff
Great…the govt won’t even stay out of my virtual bedroom…
Alex
John,
I don’t know if you’ve caught any of Jesus’ Generals posts about his (and John McCain’s) activities on Second Life, but they are pretty fucking hysterical.
Well worth a look.
PaulW
They’re spying on my online gaming??!?!
DAMN YOU CHENEY, LEAVE MY CITY OF HEROES BLASTERS ALONE!!!
Dreggas
Yeah, I want in on that action.
Blue Raven
OK, the McCain in SL stuff just slayed me.
The SL stuff in that story was more recent, but man, they had the settings down to the lowest possible. *giggles despite herself at the newbie hair*
RSA
Coincidentally, there’s this video on The Onion’s front page. The blurb:
Pretty funny video, I thought, despite my complete ignorance of WoW.
dnA
Holy crap, that guy was one of my professors. He loves Balloon Juice BTW.
Dennis - SGMM
Now they can look for imaginary threats in imaginary worlds too.
Thepanzer
I wonder how many epics the NSA dudes have gotten on company time? “Uh yeah, AQ may be hiding in Karazhan so we’d better go raid all the bosses, get their loot and tokens and verify Osama isn’t hanging out with Nightbane. After that we better run some PvP arena matches and make sure no AQ bastards are playing a stealth drood/rogue combo.”
Devin
Hey, someone has to stop Leeroy Jenkins’ reign of terror…
sstarr
So, how much will this fantastic waste of time cost us taxpayers? Seriously, I would rather pay for my local cops to visit strip clubs and enforce “no contact” laws than pay for NSA spooks to play online games.
Alex
It is just a matter of time before the Cheney administration starts kidnapping avatars in Second Life, so they can be extraordinarily renditioned to undisclosed locations in World of Warcraft to be tortured.
SpotWeld
And reality just keeps getting one step closer to “Snow Crash”
Lee
omg, the sheer level of nerdiness on display in this thread is hysterical. OK, yeah, I have a CoX character (or 20) and maybe even a level 60 (max when I quit) Shadow Priest and Warlock in WoW. And maybe, just maybe, a few (lots) of characters in a couple of other (many) games, but I’m still not a nerd (so am a nerd).
Seanly
ummm, our government is a huge joke.
They probably hear about all the ways to make 200 gold an hour in WoW & want to get in on the action. Think of how much all that gold would spur our economy!
Have fun tracking all the idiots posting in the trade channel!
Dennis - SGMM
Great book. I am re-reading it for the umpteenth time. Gotta admire a writer who would name his main character “Hiro Protagonist.”
Thepanzer
Al Qaeda sayz nerf rogues.
BethanyAnne
I’m not worried. Even if the NSA does get in, the drop-rate on “Super Secret Terrorist Plans” is so low, they’ll just be stuck farming for years…
Dennis - SGMM
Somewhere in Second Life:
These mother fuckers are the blinking cursor of intelligence gathering.
Fledermaus
They’re monitoring WoW? WTF are they expecting to find? No, really?
No wonder they weren’t able to stop 9/11. What a bunch of fucking keystone cops.
jnfr
I knew it. The NSA are furries.
Pb
Yeah, that JohnMcCain guy in SL is creepy. Did you notice that he has a third nipple? I hope he won’t be at Virtually Speaking later today at 6pm SLT.
BethanyAnne
The more that I think of it, the more the Ahn’Qiraj footage makes sense. If you wanted an empty zone, Silithus is where it is. er, isn’t. From there, the eeevil terrorists could practice their vile trade, learning to type in all caps and thread hijack with abandon. I can see why the 101 First Fighting Keyboarders must be shaking in their boots. No comment thread would be safe from their outlandish gold-selling lunacy!
Krista
Glad I missed that SL party when McCain showed up. Seeing that thong would have scarred me for life.
slippy hussein toad
This is just our alphabet-soup police agencies (police-state agencies)? doing overtly what they’ve been doing covertly for years: fucking off on the taxpayer’s dime in a world of make-believe.
If these were employees of corporate america (which I thought our Super-Genius “CEO” President was going to emulate) they’d have been rightsized six years ago for failing to do their job back then.
jrg
I imagine that when the Dems are back in office, we can expect extensive congressional hearings on who outed “Smordore”, the magical undercover CIA elf.
Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen. What information the spy agencies can get on actual foes is misrepresented to justify politically motivated wars halfway around the world, but we make up for it by spying on nerds playing online multi player games.
Meanwhile, the intelligence agents that actually do their jobs get outed by corrupt government officials. No wonder 9/11 happened on the Republican’s watch.
Is it November yet?
eglenn
lol – It’s a GA meeting.
Hi, I’m eglenn…
Hi, eglenn!
and I have a gaming problem.
70 Nelf Rogue, 70 Nelf Hunter, 50 DM/Inv Scrapper, 40 Robots/Dark Mastermind (cake^2), various 40-50 Horde incarnations, and about a dozen false starts in a variety of other games. The Mrs. is a LOTRO nut, but it never called to me…
handy
I play twinks. That’s right, bring it HATERS!!!
eglenn
Yeah, twink 19s and 29s are TONS of fun. I used to sell a LOT of +100 HP enchants to 19s – it’s a tiny bit easier for a Rogue to gather those plant spheres…
John Cole
70 UD frost mage full S3, 70 human fire mage half t6. PVP as horde, raid (when I can)with alliance.
I make level 70 twinks.
eglenn
I miss the old PvP (only made Commander). I was the weakest Rogue evar, but I played on a set team with 2 godly Druids, a kick-ass Frost Mage and a rotating cast of Paladins. The Mrs. was a Hunter and the two of us could stop most 5-man rushes (or at least speed bump until the reinforcements arrived…)
handy
Huntards are way OP! Frost magez FTW!
BethanyAnne
I’m currently focused on my troll shammy; going resto. I’ve got 4 70s, 3 on the alliance side, where I used to raid. My guild had just entered Naxx when BC hit.
I got bored with raiding, so I switched over to the Horde side, got a hunter to 70, and started goofing off with this new toon. But my Mac died, so I’m gonna fiddle around with Bioshock while I wait for the repairbot.
I’ve always been a carebear; PvE realms only and I really stink at PvP. I like AV, but that’s not PvP … at least not anymore :-) I’m really hoping that Wrath has nifty new engineering things, and some fun pets to tame. Hunters are my favorite, and I love the pets. Check out Petopia if you play a hunter and have missed it.
./nerd
Beth :-)
Scott H
Tapping into WoW on NSA’s freaky screaming hardware? C’mon, you have to drool at that.
Lurker 2.0
So THAT’S where griefers come from!
Phoenix Woman
Joe Lieberman is LEEEROY JENKINSSSS!
Singularity
SS or it didn’t happen. :)
Which realm?
Singularity
And link your armory.
PaulW
Hold on. You made a Bot/Dark?!?! My 50 Bot/Traps questions your theme… p.s. hurry up and build yerself a VEAT Soldier over in Champion server!
Frankblack
Both John’s mages are weak sauce, he’d be nothing without my Orc War and Nelf drood
CFisher
You’re all laughing now, but if it means Osama never getting his hands on Frostmourne, I think we’ll all own the NSA an apology.
jenniebee
If my last PUG was made up of jihadists, I think it’s safe to say that we have very little to worry about.
However, if any of them (and especially that goddamn hunter who kept his pet on aggressive the whole time) was from the govmint, it’s probably time to head for the hills.
zomg, do you think that level 3 in Goldshire was asking for gold as part of a personality profiling? Is it a good thing or a bad thing that I told him that he was surrounded by MoBs who were just dying to give him their cash?
Raznor
… adding, it was probably not a great idea to make the Green Zone an exact replica of the Black Temple.
I have no Second Life related snark as I’ve never played it.