2008 Woodie Awards
Terrorist invading WoW
By: Joanna Ruff
Issue date: 3/5/08 Section: News
The Director of National Intelligence of the Central Intelligence Agency released an unclassified data mining report on Feb. 15 of this year aimed at developing new software to identify terrorist activity within the virtual community.
The CIA's effort to seek out terrorists on massive multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG) is called the Reynard Project. In its initial stages, the Reynard Project is devoted to developing software that learns the social and behavioral norms of the online community, therefore detecting behavior that would seem suspicious.
Its main purpose is to perform "data mining" in the virtual community. The report defines data mining as "a program involving data-based queries, searches or other analyses of one or more electronic databases in order to discover or locate a predictive pattern or anomaly indicative of terrorist or criminal activity."
As outlined from wired.com, the project's objectives include:
• Video Analysis and Content Extraction - software to automatically identify faces, events and objects in video
• Tangram - A system that wants to create surveillance and threat warning system that evaluates known threats and finds unknown threats to issue warnings ahead of an attack
• Knowledge Discovery and Dissemination - This tool is reminiscent of the supposedly-defunct Total Information Awareness program. It seeks to access disparate databases to find patterns of known bad behavior. The program plans to work with domestic law enforcement and Homeland Security.
The major MMORG the CIA is targeting with the Reynard Project is World of Warcraft.
Jessica Gonzalez, a 20-year-old frequent WoW player, asks, "How will terrorists even access WoW? They can't plug their power cords into rocks."
Also an avid WoW player, 20-year-old Corina Hickerson says she plays the game because "you don't have to impress anyone. No one knows who you are and chances are; you're never going to see them in your life. It's like being a different person. I don't know why the CIA would want to monitor us, and I don't know why they think terrorists would pick WoW out of all the ways to communicate."
Along with WoW, the MMORPG Half Life is also going to be a major area of evaluation. If the Reynard Project goes well, the software could be used to monitor other Internet-based social interaction sites such as MySpace and Facebook.
The CIA's effort to seek out terrorists on massive multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG) is called the Reynard Project. In its initial stages, the Reynard Project is devoted to developing software that learns the social and behavioral norms of the online community, therefore detecting behavior that would seem suspicious.
Its main purpose is to perform "data mining" in the virtual community. The report defines data mining as "a program involving data-based queries, searches or other analyses of one or more electronic databases in order to discover or locate a predictive pattern or anomaly indicative of terrorist or criminal activity."
As outlined from wired.com, the project's objectives include:
• Video Analysis and Content Extraction - software to automatically identify faces, events and objects in video
• Tangram - A system that wants to create surveillance and threat warning system that evaluates known threats and finds unknown threats to issue warnings ahead of an attack
• Knowledge Discovery and Dissemination - This tool is reminiscent of the supposedly-defunct Total Information Awareness program. It seeks to access disparate databases to find patterns of known bad behavior. The program plans to work with domestic law enforcement and Homeland Security.
The major MMORG the CIA is targeting with the Reynard Project is World of Warcraft.
Jessica Gonzalez, a 20-year-old frequent WoW player, asks, "How will terrorists even access WoW? They can't plug their power cords into rocks."
Also an avid WoW player, 20-year-old Corina Hickerson says she plays the game because "you don't have to impress anyone. No one knows who you are and chances are; you're never going to see them in your life. It's like being a different person. I don't know why the CIA would want to monitor us, and I don't know why they think terrorists would pick WoW out of all the ways to communicate."
Along with WoW, the MMORPG Half Life is also going to be a major area of evaluation. If the Reynard Project goes well, the software could be used to monitor other Internet-based social interaction sites such as MySpace and Facebook.
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