NSA监控魔兽世界反恐 情报特工被指上班打游戏

To the National Security Agency analyst writing a briefing to his superiors, the situation was clear: their current surveillance efforts were lacking something. The agency's impressive arsenal of cable taps and sophisticated hacking attacks was not enough. What it really needed was a horde of undercover Orcs.

That vision of spycraft sparked a concerted drive by the NSA and its UK sister agency GCHQ to infiltrate the massive communities playing onlinegames, according to secret documents disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The files were obtained by the Guardian and are being published on Monday in partnership with the New York Times and ProPublica.

The agencies, the documents show, have built mass-collection capabilities against the Xbox Live console network, which has more than 48 million players. Real-life agents have been deployed into virtual realms, from those Orc hordes in World of Warcraft to the human avatars of Second Life. There were attempts, too, to recruit potential informants from the games' tech-friendly users.

Online gaming is big business, attracting tens of millions of users worldwide who inhabit their digital worlds as make-believe characters, living and competing with the avatars of other players. What the intelligence agencies feared, however, was that among these clans of elves and goblins, terrorists were lurking.

The NSA document, written in 2008 and titled Exploiting Terrorist Use of Games & Virtual Environments, stressed the risk of leaving games communities under-monitored, describing them as a "target-rich communications network" where intelligence targets could "hide in plain sight".

Games, the analyst wrote, "are an opportunity!". According to the briefing notes, so many different US intelligence agents were conducting operations inside games that a "deconfliction" group was required to ensure they weren't spying on, or interfering with, each other.

If properly exploited, games could produce vast amounts of intelligence, according to the NSA document. They could be used as a window for hacking attacks, to build pictures of people's social networks through "buddylists and interaction", to make approaches by undercover agents, and to obtain target identifiers (such as profile photos), geolocation, and collection of communications.

The ability to extract communications from talk channels in games would be necessary, the NSA paper argued, because of the potential for them to be used to communicate anonymously: Second Life was enabling anonymous texts and planning to introduce voice calls, while game noticeboards could, it states, be used to share information on the web addresses of terrorism forums.

Given that gaming consoles often include voice headsets, video cameras, and other identifiers, the potential for joining together biometric information with activities was also an exciting one.

But the documents contain no indication that the surveillance ever foiled any terrorist plots, nor is there any clear evidence that terror groups were using the virtual communities to communicate as the intelligence agencies predicted.

The operations raise concerns about the privacy of gamers. It is unclear how the agencies accessed their data, or how many communications were collected. Nor is it clear how the NSA ensured that it was not monitoring innocent Americans whose identity and nationality may have been concealed behind their virtual avatar.

The California-based producer of World of Warcraft said neither the NSA nor GCHQ had sought its permission to gather intelligence inside the game. "We are unaware of any surveillance taking place," said a spokesman for Blizzard Entertainment. "If it was, it would have been done without our knowledge or permission."

Microsoft declined to comment on the latest revelations, as did Philip Rosedale, the founder of Second Life and former CEO of Linden Lab, the game's operator. The company's executives did not respond to requests for comment.

The NSA declined to comment on the surveillance of games. A spokesman for GCHQ said the agency did not "confirm or deny" the revelations but added: "All GCHQ's work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that its activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate, and there is rigorous oversight, including from the secretary of state, the interception and intelligence services commissioners and the intelligence and security committee."

Though the spy agencies might have been relatively late to virtual worlds and the communities forming there, once the idea had been mooted, they joined in enthusiastically.

In May 2007, the then-chief operating officer of Second Life gave a "brown-bag lunch" address at the NSA explaining how his game gave the government "the opportunity to understand the motivation, context and consequent behaviours of non-Americans through observation, without leaving US soil".

One problem the paper's unnamed author and others in the agency faced in making their case – and avoiding suspicion that their goal was merely to play computer games at work without getting fired – was the difficulty of proving terrorists were even thinking about using games to communicate.

A 2007 invitation to a secret internal briefing noted "terrorists use online games – but perhaps not for their amusement. They are suspected of using them to communicate secretly and to transfer funds." But the agencies had no evidence to support their suspicions.

The same still seemed to hold true a year later, albeit with a measure of progress: games data that had been found in connection with internet protocol addresses, email addresses and similar information linked to terrorist groups.

"Al-Qaida terrorist target selectors and … have been found associated with Xbox Live, Second Life, World of Warcraft, and other GVEs [games and virtual environments]," the document notes. "Other targets include Chinese hackers, an Iranian nuclear scientist, Hizballah, and Hamas members."

However, that information wasn not enough to show terrorists are hiding out as pixels to discuss their next plot. Such data could merely mean someone else in an internet cafe was gaming, or a shared computer had previously been used to play games.

That lack of knowledge of whether terrorists were actually plotting online emerges in the document's recommendations: "The amount of GVEs in the world is growing but the specific ones that CT [counter-terrorism] needs to be methodically discovered and validated," it stated. "Only then can we find evidence that GVEs are being used for operational uses."

Not actually knowing whether terrorists were playing games was not enough to keep the intelligence agencies out of them, however. According to the document, GCHQ had already made a "vigorous effort" to exploit games, including "exploitation modules" against Xbox Live and World of Warcraft.

That effort, based in the agency's New Mission Development Centre in the Menwith Hill air force base in North Yorkshire, was already paying dividends by May 2008.

At the request of GCHQ, the NSA had begun a deliberate effort to extract World of Warcraft metadata from their troves of intelligence, and trying to link "accounts, characters and guilds" to Islamic extremism and arms dealing efforts. A later memo noted that among the game's active subscribers were "telecom engineers, embassy drivers, scientists, the military and other intelligence agencies".

The UK agency did not stop at World of Warcraft: by September a memo noted GCHQ had "successfully been able to get the discussions between different game players on Xbox Live".

Meanwhile, the FBI, CIA, and the Defense Humint Service were all running human intelligence operations – undercover agents – within Second Life. In fact, so crowded were the virtual worlds with staff from the different agencies, that there was a need to try to "deconflict" their efforts – or, in other words, to make sure each agency wasn't just duplicating what the others were doing.

By the end of 2008, such efforts had produced at least one usable piece of intelligence, according to the documents: following the successful takedown of a website used to trade stolen credit card details, the fraudsters moved to Second Life – and GCHQ followed, having gained their first "operational deployment" into the virtual world. This, they noted, put them in touch with an "avatar [game character] who helpfully volunteered information on the target group's latest activities".

Second Life continued to occupy the intelligence agencies' thoughts throughout 2009. One memo noted the game's economy was "essentially unregulated" and so "will almost certainly be used as a venue for terrorist laundering and will, with certainty, be used for terrorist propaganda and recruitment".

In reality, Second Life's surreal and uneven virtual world failed to attract or maintain the promised mass-audience, and attention (and its user base) waned, though the game lives on.

The agencies had other concerns about games, beyond their potential use by terrorists to communicate. Much like the pressure groups that worry about the effect of computer games on the minds of children, the NSA expressed concerns that games could be used to "reinforce prejudices and cultural stereotypes", noting that Hezbollah had produced a game called Special Forces 2.

According to the document, Hezbollah's "press section acknowledges [the game] is used for recruitment and training", serving as a "radicalising medium" with the ultimate goal of becoming a "suicide martyr". Despite the game's disturbing connotations, the "fun factor" of the game cannot be discounted, it states. As Special Forces 2 retails for $10, it concludes, the game also serves to "fund terrorist operations".

Hezbollah is not, however, the only organisation to have considered using games for recruiting. As the NSA document acknowledges: they got the idea from the US army.

"America's Army is a US army-produced game that is free [to] download from its recruitment page," says the NSA, noting the game is "acknowledged to be so good at this the army no longer needs to use it for recruitment, they use it for training".

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据英国《卫报》12月9日报道，爱德华•斯诺登提供的机密文件显示，美英情报涉足虚拟网络游戏空间寻找恐怖分子。有评论说，情报特工此举不过是想在上班时间打游戏，还不用担心被炒鱿鱼。

***新间谍“秘笈”

国家安全局分析师提议说，用电缆监控和黑客攻击搜集情报不够，还需要《魔兽世界》里一批卧底“兽人”才够劲！美国国家安全局(NSA)和英国政府通信总部(GCHQ)热烈欢迎这个建议，立即着手渗透庞大的网络游戏社区。

斯诺登提供的文件称，NSA和GCHQ已针对微软公司的Xbox Live游戏平台构建了大规模的信息搜集能力，超过4800万玩家难逃其“法眼”。真人特工已经涉足虚拟领域，广泛涉足包括《魔兽世界》和《第二人生》在内的多款游戏。此外，他们还试图从游戏玩家中发展潜在的“线人”。

在线游戏是个大产业，吸引了全世界数以千万计的用户，他们栖身于数字世界，模拟各种虚拟角色，与其他虚拟人相处。美英情报机构担忧，这些“精灵族”和“地精”等各种虚拟角色中一定“潜伏”着恐怖分子。

***前景诱人

《卫报》从斯诺登处获悉的NSA文件写于2008年，题为《发现游戏玩家及虚拟世界中的恐怖分子》，强调如若对游戏社区熟视无睹，会面临诸多风险。文件称这些游戏中“目标丰富”，且“一目了然”。分析师写道，游戏对情报机构来说“是一个机遇”。

文件说，涉足网络游戏的美国情报特工人数太多，甚至需要设立“免冲突”小组，保证特工不监视、干涉自己人。如果部署得当，可以通过游戏获取大量情报。这些情报可用作黑客攻击的“窗口”，可凭借“好友名单和互动”建立人物社会关系网，可获取目标的肖像、地理位置和通信信息。

报告还称，监控“目标”可能匿名交流，因此从聊天频道挖掘信息的能力十分重要。《第二人生》可发布匿名文本信息，布告栏还能分享恐怖主义论坛的信息。考虑到游戏机通常包括耳机，摄像头以及其他识别设备，可将生物识别信息和玩家活动综合，因此网游监控的前景十分诱人。

文件并没有说明这种监控是否“破获”过任何恐怖阴谋，也没有明显证据表明恐怖组织是否利用虚拟社区进行通信。

***隐私担忧

监控引发对游戏玩家隐私的担忧。目前尚不清楚美英情报机构以何种方式搜集了多少数据。

位于美国加利福尼亚州的《魔兽世界》制作方暴雪娱乐公司称，NSA和GCHQ没有请求公司同意就搜集游戏内部的信息。暴雪发言人说：“我们尚未察觉到任何监控活动。如果有，就是在我们不知情的情况下进行的。”

微软公司拒绝置评。《第二人生》的创始人、前林登实验室CEO菲利普•罗斯戴尔(Philip Rosedale)没有回应，该公司的高官也未置评。

NSA也拒绝就监控游戏置评。GCHQ则不置可否，该机构发言人说：“GCHQ的所有工作都在严格的法律和政策框架下执行，以确保是经过授权的，必要的和合适的。此外，我们的工作还面临国务大臣、通讯拦截专员和情报与安全委员会的严格监督。

***缺乏依据

尽管情报机构介入虚拟世界的时间相对较晚，但他们一旦形成共识，便迅速展开行动。2007年5月，《第二人生》时任CEO在NSA发表了一个讲话，阐述他的游戏如何让美国政府有机会“不必离开本土就能了解美国以外的人的动机、通信、行为。”

目前并没有确凿的证据证明恐怖分子通过网络游戏进行交流，而情报特工们看起来倒像是假借名义在上班的时候打游戏，还不用担心被革职。2007年曾有一份秘密内部报告怀疑恐怖分子玩游戏并非意在娱乐，而是进行秘密通信或洗黑钱，但这仅仅是怀疑，并没有确凿的证据。

尽管如此，GCHQ还是"积极努力"研发游戏。GCHQ没有止步于《魔兽世界》，他们已经“成功获取Xbox Live不同玩家之间的讨论信息。”

应GCHQ的请求，NSA也已开始从他们搜集的信息中提取《魔兽世界》的账户、人物角色等元数据。后来有个备忘录指出这些游戏的活跃玩家包括“电信工程师、大使司机、科学家、军人和其他请情报人员”。

同时，美国联邦调查局