US Government Looking for Terrorists... In Virtual Worlds

I've read this story in Wired a couple of times, the Secrecy News blog entry from a few days ago that it came from, and even went and looked at the (unclassified) original report (PDF) from the Office of the  Director of National Intelligence to Congress discussing it.  I still don't know what to make of this.  From the report:

Reynard is a seedling effort to study the emerging phenomenon of social (particularly terrorist) dynamics in virtual worlds and large-scale online games and their implications for the Intelligence Community.

"[The project 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."

Perhaps a bit more pointedly (bordering on bizarrely), the report says that

"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." [emphasis added]

I have to admit I'm unclear as to what might constitute "suspicious behavior" in virtual worlds, much less behavior indicative of terrorist motivations -- would that be killing as many Night Elves as possible in a battlegrounds session in WoW, emerging as a successful and highly profitable mole in EVE Online, or just using pose balls to role-play anatomically unlikely scenarios with someone using a hedgehog avatar in Second Life? 

Is this new seedling program something we should be concerned about (Big Brother in your virtual world, watching your ganking, duping, gold-farming, cybersexing ways), something we should roll our eyes at (checking to make sure this didn't come from The Onion), or something we should hail as an interesting new way for academics to get yet another character to level 70 -- in the name of research? 

Comments

[David Stocker]

1.

"or something we should hail as an interesting new way for academics to get yet another character to level 70 -- in the name of research? "

...or a way for G-men to get yet another character to level 70 in the name of fighting terrorism.

This actually sounds like a perfect storm of buzzword (virtual world), boondogle and big brother. Meanwhile, while the government is watching our cyber /ganking habits, the real terrorists are safely using their caves to make plans.

[eric]

2.

Juan Cole recently had an appropriately mocking response to the "terrorists r in ur virtual worlds" hysteria: "Even the Internet war-game sites -- known in geek terms as MMORPGs, or massively multiplayer online role-playing games, which include "Worlds of Warcraft" -- would probably just make most terrorists overweight and addicted to the Internet."

[Nicholas Chambers]

3.

I think the "suspicious behaviour" would include things like Guild-Meetings with kneeling and praying to Elune at noon...

Now here's a good way to get yourself on a terrorist watch-list:

- Create a horde character
- A rogue too
- Give him an arabic name
- Join the guild which has the word "bomb" in its name
- And skill his goblin engineering skill on max.

Some people really do have too much money...

[Ursus Maritimus]

4.

Will they interface with local law-enforcement, like Gnomeland Security?

[Teal Deer]

5.

Maybe the US Government's Elite Anti-Terrorism Forces can help Blizzard and Sony "automatically detect" suspicious behavior like hacking, ghosting, and farming while they're at it. I'm ever so hopeful.

[Chas]

6.

I like the levity of this, but I'm surprised that so many see this as just something to mock. Academics and government origanizations have been arguing about the serious value of virtual worlds to training, communication, and planning for some time now.

If you're in the national security realm, once you identify something as valuable to YOU, the next question becomes "is it valuable to THEM" (them, being, of course, whatever international boogeyman we currently fixate on) and similarly "are they already using this?" or "if they can't use it, is there a poor-man's equivalent they could be using?" and "how could it be used?"

It doesn't have to take a HUGE amount of resources to look into these questions. I'm not the paranoid sort, but I like to see that the topic's not being ignored completely.

[Occulte]

7.

After having read a fair chunk of the original PDF, it seems that Reynard is just a small tangent study using virtual worlds as a possible source for behavioral patterns that may or may not be applicable to traditional terrorist activities.

I remember in a previous article, someone mentioned Raph Koster. I read up on him and found an interesting document dubbed, The Laws of Online World Design. There were 2 laws in particular that popped out in mind after reading the PDF which could be somewhat applicable to terrorism in general. They are under the "Social Laws" section.

• Identity You will NEVER have a solid unique identity for your problematic players. They essentially have complete anonymity because of the Internet. Even addresses, credit cards, and so on can be faked--and will be.
• Psychological disinhibition People act like jerks more easily online, because anonymity is intoxicating. It is easier to objectify other people and therefore to treat them badly. The only way to combat this is to get them to empathize more with other players.

The result might be behaviors in an anonymous environment. But... that's just a shoot off the hip (albeit.. far reached) possibility.

[thoreau]

8.

Virtual worlds can provide an online meeting place for militant gropus. I'm not sure this would be an ideal place, seeing how Blizzard or a similar company could quickly check chat logs to determine 'suspicious' discussions.

That being said, games like America's Army show the potential for training militant groups. A similary designed VW would would be excellent at providing vocabulary training specific to the task at hand, simulated attack situations, familiarity with various weapons, and even establish a ranking system for following orders and carrying out the final task.

Using tools like FPS Creator X10 a talented programmer could create the ideal training environment in a week or two.

[thoreau]

9.

Virtual worlds can provide an online meeting place for militant gropus. I'm not sure this would be an ideal place, seeing how Blizzard or a similar company could quickly check chat logs to determine 'suspicious' discussions.

That being said, games like America's Army show the potential for training militant groups. A similary designed VW would would be excellent at providing vocabulary training specific to the task at hand, simulated attack situations, familiarity with various weapons, and even establish a ranking system for following orders and carrying out the final task.

Using tools like FPS Creator X10 a talented programmer could create the ideal training environment in a week or two.

[Schell]

10.

It seems to me that virtual worlds are a little impractical when it comes to organizing terrorism. Things like "email" and "telephones" appear to be better tools for communication. I couldn't imagine someone sitting in their terrorist hideout, logging into WoW and running to a virtual terrorist hideout to have a meeting. Maybe that's just me.

[thoreau]

11.

@Schell

We're not talking about those in Afganistan, rather home grown terrorists in Britain and the U.S.

A local LAN type game (Counter Strike for example) could provide the perfect environment for not only recruiting but training.

[chas]

12.

@thoreau
agreed. There are several ways to look at this too.

1) Just as the army and USMC are looking at using game "level builders" as virtual sand tables- to plan and walk through strategies, an adversary with distributed minions may try to do the same using whatever's available... be it Second Life or Neverwinter nights.

It doesn't have to look 100% real to be valuable in training. Heck, when I was in, we'd sandtable with cigarette butts and styrofoam cups to plan an op. Doing it with scriptable elves, dwarves, and trolls on a Neverwinter Nights platform is still a step up.

2) In old "spy lore" there were "drop points" and "mark sites." If you were doing your rounds and saw three chalk marks on a doorway, you knew action X was needed.

Several years ago, we saw talk about the same being done with Usenet posts- a title from a certain name meant different things... or (later) just a picture in a flickr account. You might even know that the poster is a suspect, but because it's posted to the general public, you can't really tell which viewer is innocent and which is the person receiving the message.

MMO's are public enough to keep that obscurity, but private enough that you can't just "bot" something to keep an eye for changes.

3) You mention logs, but the problem is there's no requirement for such logs to be kept. Electroning banking leaves a good trace most of the time, but there's been (somewhat farfetched) speculation that MMO's could be something of a blind spot when tied to RMT. You can trace the transaction to the RMT seller but not through the game to who gets it on the other side (who RMT's it back out to real cash). With the "secondary market" as high as it is, there's plenty of room to camouflage at least a few hundred thousand in illicit transfers.

[lewy]

13.

I don't know, I think that something like Second Life could be awfully useful for training people who need to assemble mechanical devices, whether it be car engines or bombs. "Insert pin A into slot Y being very, very careful not to unduly agitate tube Z..."

[Benjamin Duranske]

14.

My take? So what. Everyone appears to be reacting to the idea that they are looking for terrorists in games, which simply isn't true. This is a pilot study regarding patterns of social interaction, which they hope to eventually be able to apply to real world data sets. It uses public data. It strikes me as about as noteworthy as a study they might do standing on a streetcorner in D.C. and making notes about observable connections between anonymous people who walked by. I just don't get what the fuss is, except that it's fun to have a fuss. A slightly expanded take on this at VB is linked to my name.

[Nicholas Chambers]

15.

@lewy: I think writing a VBA-based program in Microsoft Powerpoint would be a hell lot more effective, easier and secure.

@thoreau and all those supporters: Could you please post a link to a veritable website, which states that "[...]games like America's Army show the potential for training militant groups.". It's been criticised for portraiting the so-called "clean warfare", but training militant groups? Ehh... that sounds more like the classical politician "I need more votes from the conservatives"-gossip.

[poetryman69]

16.

Energy Independence Now!

No more Oil Wars!

Stop funding the terrorists!

Drill in Anwar.

Build more nuclear power plants

Use More coal.

Use more natural gas

Turn trash into energy

Double the efficiency of windmills and solar cells.

If France can do nuclear power so can we.

If Brazil can do biomass/ethanol power so can we.

If Australia can do LNG power so can we.

Domestically produced energy will end recession and spur the economy.

[jason]

17.

Since they supposedly can't find any real life terrorists (I could say a lot about WHY here, but I spare you the "conspiracy theory") they are reaching faaar out, into games.

Don't be surprised if they start banning random citizens from playing MMOs, or from using the internet altogether. This war isn't on "them"...it's on YOU.

[Mikyo]

18.

I'll turn on the nightlight. Leave the closet door open. Don't forget to check under the bed. And bring an extra clip for the Holy AKM +666.

[Nicholas Chambers]

19.

Uhu... and they'll soon use Hellgate London to practice friendly-fire, eh?

[dmx]

20.

Eh... They'd find role play terrorists in Eve-O for sure. Conclusion;- Most terrorists are therefore overweight lonely geeks who use linux.

Hmm.. Yeah don't see this as being that usefull I'm afraid.

[lewy]

21.

@Nicholas Chambers:

Second Life allows the participants to interface in real time regardless of where they are in the world (trainees in London, trainers in Pakistan) and the scripting capabilities may make for a richer experience. For instance, agitating the chemicals too violently may make for an explosion.

[Andy Havens]

22.

@lewy: I hope and pray that terrorists try to train themselves on how to make bombs and mix chemicals in virtual worlds as opposed to in real life. Why? Because, at least for the near term, the level of sophistication of representation is such that then, when they try to transfer virtual skills into the real world, they'll blow they dang selves up.

I've spent thousands of hours in all kinds of 1st person and 3rd person shooting games. The one time I played paint ball, I got my ass kicked so bad that my feeling, leaving the game, was that my experiences in video-mediated shooting games may have negatively impacted my ability to wangle a real life weapon.

[SusanC]

23.

Having just now read the document, it looks to me like a sensible research proposal. (Though I might quibble over the wording of "(particularly terrorist)").

Many of the current VW's have:

a) Large social networks of real people
b) Types of activity that the VW owners are trying to prevent (DoS attacks on servers, modded clients, gold farming, griefing...)
c) Some of this undesired activity is being carried out by organized groups, whose members are trying to evade detection (e.g. by use of alts).

Data mining tools that identify the griefers and gold farmers are of interest in their own right, but the techniques developed will quite possibly be useful in other contexts (e.g. identifying criminal gangs or terrorist networks from telephone records).

It's hotly disputed whether griefers like W-Hat are a good experimental model for terrorist groups. There are notable differences (VW griefers seem to be pretty risk-averse, while suicide bombers are prepared to die; Islamic or Irish terrorism has a political dimension that appears to be lacking in griefers etc). But for this kind of a study, these differences probably don't matter.

[Mikyo]

24.

It would sound much more reasonable to me, if DOD wanted to pay me to do it.

That said, does anyone really believe that Hillary could ever become popular enough to deceive the elect, even with signs and wonders?

Maybe we are wating for Prince Charles instead. After all, he is a descendant of the House of David! :P

[dmx]

25.

""It's hotly disputed whether griefers like W-Hat are a good experimental model for terrorist groups.""

A) W-Hat are griefers only in the paranoid mind of a few second hat trolls

B) To equate "griefers" with terrorists is both patently offensive to real world terrorism victims, but also to computer gamers.

What an absurd and obnoxious statement. Its not hotly disputed. Its not even up for rational debate.

[dmx]

26.

read "second hat" as "second life" lol

[Mikyo]

27.

No boon left undoggled :P

[Nicholas Chambers]

28.

@lewy: Pretty much what Andy said.

I think CIA can now officially declare everybody on this site as a terrorist, for denying their perfectly well thought-out plan to arrest people for no apparent reason.

[lewy]

29.

@Andy Havens:

I think that the mistake you're making is assuming that training in virtual words is an either/or proposition. I would suggest that it's most likely to take the form of a supplement. Why would our hypothetical terrorists abandon their message boards, their video training films and whatever other tools they have? Of course they wouldn't.

In terms of the paintball analogy I seem to recall that the US Army was experimenting with FPS's as a training mechanism. Again, the games wouldn't replace actually going down to the range and firing a weapon. But they could be a useful supplement.