www.tomsguide.com/us/World-Warcraft-Player-Plane-Threat,news-4240.html

A World of Warcraft gamer made threats in-game to blow up a commercial airline.

ZoomA recent report from WBIC in Indiana dictates that what you say within an online game or virtual social networking scene can--and will--be used against you, especially in a post-911 world. Apparently, one 18-year-old figured this out after making threats to blow up a commercial airliner within the MMORPG, World of Warcraft. Whether the gamer was joking or being quite serious is irrelevant; announcing terrorist activities in public areas--whether they're rooted in reality or created in a virtual world--is not a very good thing.

Taking the threats seriously, a World of Warcraft moderator thus contacted the authorities and provided the chat documents. Once the player's IP address was determined, the FBI traced the address back to the player and showed up at his door. According to TweakTown, the gamer was interrogated and now may face federal charges.

However, the strange part about the whole incident was the comment made by the WoW player during the interrogation with the FBI: he was merely testing a theory.
 

That's kind of funny, but if you are going to test that kind of theory you should do it from a PC at a lan center or something during peak hours and make a dummy account or free trial etc.

People are so dumb, especially terrorists.

Shows three things of note:
1) People are stupid.
2) Big brother IS watching.
3) Even if big brother isn't watching your neighbors are.

Ever since 911, any misuse of sensitive words will gets you in trouble. Be it in sms, phone and even in-game...

Basically everything it seems...

FWIW the NSA & FBI (and some other agencies) have been using computer programmes to monitor traffic.
All sorts of 'traffic' (Communications).  This apparently included ALL phone and email communication across U.S. borders.

See Carnivore

There are supposed to be a number of key words that 'flag' a message.
From there - more software apparently attempts to decide on context...
And from there (if the context is considered a threat) it is passed on for additional analysis...eventually by a human.

I have a few issues with this.
1. If the NSA and FBI have software that can determine context of a message then why haven't they written a kick arse MMO with their wonder AI?
2. If rumors are to be believed - there is so much traffic now that even the very small percentage that is being 'flagged' has analysts completely swamped.  Supposedly they are YEARS behind.  Part of the critical factors about intelligence is that it must be timely.  There is no point collecting data that you cannot interpret in time for it to be any good.  I believe the 9/11 Senate Inquiry noted this.
3. Any real terrorist group would use a code.  A straight out substitute could defeat any program like this quite easily unless the FBI already knew the code... in which case they already know the suspects...
Something like "the" = a, "and" = b, "then" = c
Then there are things like Romanji to deal with as well?

I also wonder how, in many MMOs which are based on war and violence, they can spot a potentially dangerous message when such messages are completely in context?

Yeah that town is about 10 mins away from here.

Originally posted by Shadus

Shows three things of note:
1) People are stupid.
2) Big brother IS watching.
3) Even if big brother isn't watching your neighbors are.

1984!

And thus, I'm not an american.....enjoy your communism.....errrr I mean enjoy your capitalist control and controlling government :P And for the records....I've so said stuff like that in WoW and never got in trouble, musta just been bad luck :P

Originally posted by arctarus

www.tomsguide.com/us/World-Warcraft-Player-Plane-Threat,news-4240.html

 

A World of Warcraft gamer made threats in-game to blow up a commercial airline.

ZoomA recent report from WBIC in Indiana dictates that what you say within an online game or virtual social networking scene can--and will--be used against you, especially in a post-911 world. Apparently, one 18-year-old figured this out after making threats to blow up a commercial airliner within the MMORPG, World of Warcraft. Whether the gamer was joking or being quite serious is irrelevant; announcing terrorist activities in public areas--whether they're rooted in reality or created in a virtual world--is not a very good thing.

Taking the threats seriously, a World of Warcraft moderator thus contacted the authorities and provided the chat documents. Once the player's IP address was determined, the FBI traced the address back to the player and showed up at his door. According to TweakTown, the gamer was interrogated and now may face federal charges.

However, the strange part about the whole incident was the comment made by the WoW player during the interrogation with the FBI: he was merely testing a theory.
 

 

 

My two cents:  the idiot deserved it.   What level of stupidity does your brain have to be at to make such statements in a public chat area?     Or was the moron just so desperate for attention that he decided to say something outrageous?     Either way, good on those tha reported him and those that nailed him.

Replying to the above poster who talked about the FBI eavesdropping:

Just imagine a Counter-Strike MMO:

Osama187:"We just need to put the bomb in section B."

TerroristPlayer2: "Osama! That's a stupid idea. Shoot the officer at A, drop it there."

Osama:  "Either way, the whole thing will go boom. :)"

Terrorist: "Where should we try it?"

Osama: "How about on [9/11]? We already got them once there."

Now, this is an entirely fake and quite bad conversation, but it could happen. Imagine all the flags the FBIs little program would but on that one :P And it'd all be in-context

I wonder how many of you are now going to get Heebie Jeebies from teh Feebies as a result of this thread.

Originally posted by nickelpat

Replying to the above poster who talked about the FBI eavesdropping:

Just imagine a Counter-Strike MMO:

Osama187:"We just need to put the bomb in section B."

TerroristPlayer2: "Osama! That's a stupid idea. Shoot the officer at A, drop it there."

Osama:  "Either way, the whole thing will go boom. :)"

Terrorist: "Where should we try it?"

Osama: "How about on [9/11]? We already got them once there."

Now, this is an entirely fake and quite bad conversation, but it could happen. Imagine all the flags the FBIs little program would but on that one :P And it'd all be in-context

bahaha you've just been flagged.

The point being he caused the use of significant public resources to check into his behavior.  Those resources could be been used in places they were needed.  You tax dollars at work.  Hope he gets a significant fine out of it.

Originally posted by nickelpat

Replying to the above poster who talked about the FBI eavesdropping:

....

Now, this is an entirely fake and quite bad conversation, but it could happen. Imagine all the flags the FBIs little program would but on that one :P And it'd all be in-context

Well, as a matter of fact, less than an hour before I made my post i had been playing WWIIoL where there were serious discussions about bombing enemy towns and killing the enemy leaders.  Which is what made me think of the 'in context' speak in MMOs.

Of course we also discussed flying elephants... (seriously!)

Somehow after reading the article i now relate the fbi to the nazi, gamers to jews

and mmos to concentration camps... makes any sense?

Originally posted by Kozom

Somehow after reading the article i now relate the fbi to the nazi, gamers to jews

and mmos to concentration camps... makes any sense?

Originally posted by Kozom

Somehow after reading the article i now relate the fbi to ...?

CLOWNS.

It wouldn't be so bad if the FBI and other agencies could actually be trusted to make sense of the information.

But, do you remember this? (this is not a hoax BTW - 100% real)

Steve Jackson Games v United States Secret Service
The malevolence of the federal government is only one worry. There is another problem as well, the stupidity of the federal government. An early case of the feds going nuts over 'hackers,' the Secret Service shut down and seized a Bulletin Board System in the belief that some illegal information was being passed along. They also read and deleted 162 private emails. Then someone caught a glimpse of Steve Jackson's games, including GURPS Cyberpunk, and things got very difficult to explain to a government which doesn't exactly recruit geniuses to begin with. This case also led to me killing my own game Kill Whitey: The Revolution, a collectible card game I was supposed to have retired on by now.

From here

And
SJ Games vs. the Secret Service

On March 1 1990, the offices of Steve Jackson Games, in Austin, Texas, were raided by the U.S. Secret Service as part of a nationwide investigation of data piracy. The initial news stories simply reported that the Secret Service had raided a suspected ring of hackers. Gradually, the true story emerged.

More than three years later, a federal court awarded damages and attorneys' fees to the game company, ruling that the raid had been careless, illegal, and completely unjustified.

...

In the course of that visit, it became clear that the investigating agents considered GURPS Cyberpunk to be "a handbook for computer crime." They seemed to make no distinction between a discussion of futuristic credit fraud, using equipment that doesn't exist, and modern real-life credit card abuse. A repeated comment by the agents was "This is real."

Source
 

Which lead to this
http://www.sjgames.com/hacker/deluxe/img/hacker_rules.pdf

I love the line:
Important Notice To Secret Service! This Is Only A Game!
These Are Not Real Hacking Instructions!
You Cannot Hack Into Real Computers By Rolling Little Dice!
(page 5)

Originally posted by Dewm

Originally posted by nickelpat

Replying to the above poster who talked about the FBI eavesdropping:

Just imagine a Counter-Strike MMO:

Osama187:"We just need to put the bomb in section B."

TerroristPlayer2: "Osama! That's a stupid idea. Shoot the officer at A, drop it there."

Osama:  "Either way, the whole thing will go boom. :)"

Terrorist: "Where should we try it?"

Osama: "How about on [9/11]? We already got them once there."

Now, this is an entirely fake and quite bad conversation, but it could happen. Imagine all the flags the FBIs little program would but on that one :P And it'd all be in-context

 

bahaha you've just been flagged.

Ah crap. I see your point...I'm so screwed :P

Prior to 9/11...such a threat wouldn't have raised an eyebrow, no one would have believed it was possible.

We're far more paranoid now as a result of that tradgedy and its obvious we're not over it yet. Might take a generation before it will ease up again.

Originally posted by Kyleran

Prior to 9/11...such a threat wouldn't have raised an eyebrow, no one would have believed it was possible.

We're far more paranoid now as a result of that tradgedy and its obvious we're not over it yet. Might take a generation before it will ease up again.

 

No.

Remember post 9/11 when the U.S. Government made all these 'directives' about Aircraft Security?
Such as - no planes flying over major cities?
Well, how do you explain this?
http://news.airwise.com/story/view/1160607410.html

The fact is that you can still fly around Manhattan Island provided you file a flight plan...
I guess they hope that a Terrorist would say "last leg... fly into building killing lots of Americans!" as part of the flight plan?

It's all talk.  Airline Security is still a joke.
The fact is people want quick check in.  They want to fly and they want it to be easy to get on a plane.  And they want travel to be cheap.

The reality is that any form of mass transit is vulnerable.
Security costs money.
It costs money to oversee the security to see it is not abused and / or exploited.

We are simply not prepared to pay for that.

On the bright side - why should we? 
Terrorist deaths are nothing compared to road deaths or violent crime as an example.
 

Always have your excuse ready whenever doing something that might by illegal, testing a theory my arse.

The authorities have to do things like this to create the illusion that they are doing something half useful with all the spying equipment they have spent our taxes on. It's like jails, they do nothing but turn petty criminals into hardened ones but we must have them so the authorities can show us what a wonderful job they are doing.

Stupid thing the guy did however I don't think he should be punished to hard... maybe a good fine should do the job.

We are living the illusion of freedom, Echelon is watching us all.

Originally posted by Forumfall

We are living the illusion of freedom

This i totally.... sad....

Originally posted by korat102

It's like jails, they do nothing but turn petty criminals into hardened ones but we must have them so the authorities can show us what a wonderful job they are doing.

I agree, anyone convicted of a crime should be shot by the plaintiff.

Bullets are a lot cheaper than jails.

(this is saracasm by the way, in case you had any doubts)