Are you a Gamer? Do you like Second Life?

From a friend on Book of Face

"I was at one time told not to talk on the phone about specifics in role-playing games such as NSDM (National Strategic Decision Making Game), as a courtesy to the NSA, who then would have to waste bandwidth sifting through all the keywords and pretend diplomacy to make sure I wasn't plotting some international incident.

I thought this was kind of silly and overcautious until I read this article! http://boingboing.net/2015/05/08/your-cyberpunk-games-are-dange.html

Not only the feds have gotten nervous in the past about role playing games being a side channel for leaking state secrets, but conspiracy theorists like to freak out about the Illuminati card game, which got its material from conspiracy theories. Talk about a feedback loop, LOL

Incidentally the NSA is spying on online MMO games such as Second Life. I guess someone could use Second Life to communicate non-game things, but it seems to me like they'd be listening to a lot of garbage trying to find the droids they're looking for."

And in the linked article I find the following zingers

"on the first of March, 1990, the Secret Service raided Steve Jackson Games in Austin, Texas, and confiscated the manuscript of a product in development. One of the agents serving the warrant grumbled, in Steve Jackson’s presence, that his company was producing a “manual for computer crime.” In addition to the draft of the game, Jackson reported that the Secret Service also seized “the two office computers the manuscript was on” and “thousands of dollars’ worth of associated hardware and software.”

"Shortly after the Secret Service raid in March 1990, in an account written in the next issue of Jackson’s in-house magazine Roleplayer, Jackson reported that “we have since been told that neither SJ Games nor the GURPS Cyberpunk manuscript was the object of the raids.” Indeed, he further reports that “the home of the GURPS Cyberpunk writer was also raided, and his own computer taken.” Blankenship, for his part, remembered waking up at gunpoint as the Secret Service confiscated his personal computers and related paraphernalia. "

"The raid couldn’t have come at a worse time for Steve Jackson Games. Already in debt, the company depended heavily on new releases for cash flow, and the confiscation of the GURPS Cyberpunk manuscript would significantly delay the book’s release. On March 9, the company let go eight people from its staff of seventeen. Since the Secret Service did not immediately return the manuscript, the team frantically reconstructed it from earlier draft materials and hurried it into print.

Ultimately, however, it turned out that the Secret Service had been chasing something no more real than William Weatherby.

The seizure itself had its share of procedural defects, but behind them loomed another, weightier issue: how valuable, and potentially damaging, the 911 document truly was. Bell South had reported the intrusion into its computer network to the Secret Service in July 1989, and claimed that its 911 “program” was engineered at a cost of $79,449—the Secret Service affidavit conflates cost of the program with that of the text file reprinted by Phrack. This fed a certain hysteria in the media, which faithfully parroted the government’s exaggerations.

But as far as forbidden knowledge goes, the actual document contained only the most cursory overview of the bureaucracy surrounding the 911 system, without any code nor any actionable information which could threaten the stability of emergency calling in the United States. Moreover, equating copying an electronic document with theft raised a host of untested legal questions.

Seriously. Go read the WHOLE thing. Then look around your "Digital Life". Do you play an on-line game? Are you on Second Life? Are you on any "Social" network?

Just What do you do, which might be of interest of the any law enforcement agency for what reason?