Online multiplayer video gaming is big business for the likes of Microsoft and Sony, but government organizations actually have considered it the next meeting ground for big terror.
According to documents uncovered by Edward Snowden and published by The Guardian on December 9th, video game chat rooms are likely to attract terrorists looking for some privacy.
One possible reason why titles such as Madden and Microsoft Flight Simulator are being called out is also one of their biggest sellling points: extreme realism. The Madden franchise prides itself on recreating the gridirons, and you don’t have to have seen The Dark Knight Rises to know that football stadiums are major terror targets. Meanwhile, Flight Simulator has been aiming to achieve just that, with a perfectionist level of realism, since well before online multiplayer even existed, meaning it could have even been used to plan 9/11.
To anybody who has ever heard the often racist tirades that take place in online gameplay, this seems like a wrongful use of resources. Isn’t XBL more likely to spawn a new more virulent outpost of the KKK? Is all of Youtube being monitored for threats against President Obama?
This seems a little under-thought-through by the NSA, though. What kind of dumb terrorist would use a chat room owned by big business to conduct secret meetings? Is it arrogance by the NSA & their British equivalent, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), assuming that their war on terror has taken away every other territory and underground hangout so that the terrorists have turned to Sim City and Gran Turismo for a place to plot future attacks?
The more that you examine this, the more it seems like someone at the NSA making up work for their their annual review: “No, that time I spent on XBL, that was for… AMERICA!”
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