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From the Snowden files: 007 now wields a mouse, not a Walther PPK

People at an international event in Hanover, Germany, play World of Warcraft, one of the online games monitored by U.S. and British intelligence agencies, according to once-classified documents.
(Johannes Eisele / AFP/Getty Images)
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If you’ve made a Christmas gift list that includes online gaming this year, you may want to be checking that twice. Intelligence agencies in both Britain and the U.S. have been paying attention to how you play games online — not for the sporting interest but to look for potential terrorists, and to recruit some likely candidates for spycraft.

Classified documents from Edward P. Snowden’s filched trove were combed by the Guardian, ProPublica and the New York Times, which found that the online games that make a fortune for gaming companies are also a target-rich environment for intelligence agencies, which say they’re looking for terrorist behavior cloaked behind fun and games.

Monitoring the players and the playing in Xbox Live, Second Life and World of Warcraft, according to the news agencies, was motivated by concerns that terrorists or criminal networks could use the cover of characters and players to keep in touch with one another to plan attacks and move money around.

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But the news agencies also quoted Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution saying, “For terror groups looking to keep their communications secret, there are far more effective and easier ways to do so than putting on a troll avatar.”

This could go back as far as 2008, when the intelligence agencies fretted about how online games could provide cover for the mechanics of actual terrorist attacks. The game they played, according to the news reports, imagined a World of Warcraft plot against the White House. Still, the reports said, there’s little evidence that terrorists have looked to gaming as a means to violent ends.

By now, no one should be shocked that the government, just like private companies, is looking over the Internet’s shoulder to suss out data. After all, online gaming is a commercial transaction with a profit-making company, not your blood-test results at the doctor’s office.

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Intriguingly, the intelligence agencies also were reported to have come up with their own characters and launched them into games like Second Life.

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I would love to know what governments dream up: A wizard in pinstripes? A farmer with a huge, tempting supply of explosive fertilizer? A vamp like Natasha Fatale, the “Rocky and Bullwinkle” Cold War spy moll? Edward Snowden, if you’re still sitting on those docs, please let us know!

If intelligence agencies are peering over your virtual wall to find this, it made me wonder about the boom in online sharpen-your-wits games supposedly designed to keep your neural pathways clear and quick: Is some insurance or pharmaceutical company paying the gaming firms to get those results, to start sending your computer pop-up ads for dementia drugs?

From a writer’s point of view, this is a sad development for spy fiction; can readers be as engaged by John le Carre plots that are all about virtual derring-do? If all that’s at risk is gaming points, not life and limb, how enthralling can the story be?

For you gamers, it may make you uneasy to know that the NSA may be watching your game performances, even if your parents aren’t.

On the other hand, if your folks keep giving you grief about all the time you spend with online games, now you can tell them that you’re not just wasting time messing around on your computer — you are doing it for your country.

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Follow Patt Morrison on Twitter @pattmlatimes

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