NSA spying on people via XBone Kinects; World of Warcraft and Second Life

[BullockDS]

http://benswann.com/guess-which-hot-christmas-game-console-the-nsa-is-hacking-into/

 

(Totally not stealing somebody's topic or post from the ASSEMblerGames forums)

 

"According to the documents, NSA agents have created actual characters in World of Warcraft and Second Life and are using them to spy on players.

 

The documents detail that the NSA has mass data collection capabilities through the Xbox Live console online network. The network boasts more than 48 million individuals from all over the world. The documents even show that the NSA has been attempting to recruit tech savvy users as informants through the gaming network."

 

I'm gonna be brutally honest: who the fuck didn't see the NSA getting their greasy hands on the XBone Kinects? But WoW and Second Life: that Ididn't expect (yet it's not totally surprising of the NSA either).

 

The NSA are a taxpayer-funded* joke (albeit a dangerous joke). Their misplaced efforts make the McCarthyist communist witchhunts of the 1940s/50s look positively sane and negligible in comparison.

 

(*Wait a minute, "taxpayer-funded")... OH MY GOD I'M PAYING MY GOVERNMENT TO PLAY WORLD OF WARCRAFT AND SECOND LIFE. I'm sure a fair bundle of gov't employees already play on their computers, phones, or GP32s now-and-again (oh Freecell, how could we survive the office without thee?), but we are now literally paying kids/young adults to play videogames (and let's face it: they're not exactly gonna be too vigilant with their "investigative" playing). I'm sure that even many of the more tax-supportive members here will find this to be ridiculous. 

 

The worst part about the NSA gamers is that this manages to be frivolous and scary at the same time: remember that one kid who got reported for, then arrested and put in jail on his 19th birthday just for making an (admittedly off-color) joke about shooting up a school on League of Legends? I guarantee that such arrests will become less sporadic.

 

I applaud Snowden for the same reason I encourage people who videotape** police officers: the government never looks over the agencies who watch us (short of a blue moon appearing over a frozen Hell full of flying pigs getting struck by lighting while claiming winning lottery tickets during Thanksgivukkah***), so it's time for us to start watching our government and our police. It's bad enough that some states outlaw the recording of police actions.

And to anybody who's gonna say that they don't governments upping seemingly insignificant surveillance (e.g. "I don't do anything bad, so it's fine by me!"), I'm gonna be blunt: "They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." (Benjamin Franklin) When citizens (whether public or private) have willingly surrendered their basic rights for a promise of protection and security (e.g. Sedition Act of 1918, McCarthyism/Second Red Scare, etc), this causes more and more innocuous actions to be considered a threat to the Safety and Welfare of the Nation. Posting rap lyrics boasting that you'll be more infamous than the Boston Bombing can be considered a terrorist action. Yes, rap lyrics in bad taste were put on the same level as making a threat on the President's life. (though to be fair his case was overturned by a petition of ~90k people, which shows why people care even if it didn't affect them directly: because it has the potential to, with chances going up the longer it's unchecked.)

 

**videotape? Ah crapbaskets, I make myself sound older than I really am.

***I may have gone overboard with this one... and with the footnotes. Nominee for Shitpost of the Year, 2013 pls.