Thursday, November 14, 2013

Video Game Terror

Video Game Terror



Sandy Hook shooting reignites debate over violent video games ...

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2250811
Dec 20, 2012 · The Sandy Hook school shooting has reignited the debate around violentvideo games, with even some of the games' designers claiming the 


08/24/11 AL QAEDA IN AZEROTH? TERRORISM RECRUITING AND TRAINING IN VIRTUAL WORLDS That’s right, terrorism has been chased into using virtual reality as its staging grounds. The future is a strange, comical, and scary place to live when that Level 40 Night Elf looking for a group may be Al Qaeda in disguise.
The US Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) has been aiming to trace criminal and terrorist activities perpetrated online. Started in 2008, their “Project Reynard” is specifically geared towards uncovering recruiting and training operations going unnoticed in online gaming environments. Check out the news story explaining Project Reynard in the video below. While the IARPA project is unlikely to produce publicly accessible results anytime soon, anxiety over the use of virtual reality for terrorism is already increasing. The recent bombing and massacre in Norway, and a Dutch best selling novel have also heightened the public awareness of terrorists benefiting from online games. Yet even if terrorists can be found in virtual reality the way they have been found in every other communication system, will kicking them out really end their operations?
That terrorists have infiltrated online games is no longer largely questioned. The US National Intelligence director acknowledged the threat in his Data Mining Report in 2008. This is a real phenomenon, a real “threat to national security”, and that blows my mind. When did hard-line killers get together and say, “you know where we can organize our attacks? The same place where nerds go to pretend to be superheroes and kill bad guys.” The irony there is palpable. What remains to be seen, however, is if governments will be able to accurately quantify the size of this threat, and neutralize it. That’s where Project Reynard comes in, as Bill Moyers explains:

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