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Monday
Dec092013

NSA now spying on.....World of Warcraft and XBox Live...does it end?

Government spying programs have reportedly peeked at phone records, data centers, and email contact lists, but the latest leaks point to a coordinated effort to spy on gaming networks, too.

According to The New York Times, documents leaked by Edward Snowden suggest that U.S. and U.K. officials have tapped into online gaming worlds like World of Warcraft and Second Life. The agencies have created their own online personas "to try to recruit informers" and gather data on game communications, the Times said.

While chats about fake online realms might seem useless, the NSA said at one point that they can be "a way to hide in plain sight." At this point, though, it does not appear that the agency has actually uncovered a terrorist plot within an online world.

The surveillance, however, also extends to Xbox Live, which has 48 million members worldwide. The paper did not know how the NSA was monitoring content. Blizzard, which runs World of Warcraft, said it had not detected any sort of surveillance on its network, and denied cooperating with the feds.

The NSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The U.S. effort to infiltrate gaming systems dates back to at least 2007, while the U.K. apparently started taking an interest a year later, the Times said.

The news comes as several top tech firms today made a public push for more transparency and more limited surveillance. AOL, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo signed on for Global Government Surveillance Reform, and they are pushing five principles: limiting governments' authority to collect users' information; oversight and accountability; transparency about government demands; respecting the free flow of information; and avoiding conflicts among governments.

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