NSA spied on World of Warcraft, Second Life games as well

Not only did the National Security Agency (NSA) and British spies kept an eye on email, Facebook and Twitter to name a few, they also spied on online gaming worlds, according to reports in the New York Times and the Guardian.

According to NYT, American and British spies kept an eye World of Warcraft and Second Life and conducted surveillance and collected data from these games. World of Warcraft and Second Life are online role-playing games where users create an online 'avatar' and play the game which involves quests etc. Users usually team with people from across the world to play these virtual games.

The NYT report adds that the NSA feared that "terrorist or criminal networks could use the games to communicate secretly, move money or plot attacks". Government agents created their own digital avatars to spy on the online gaming population adds the report.

The report says, "The spies have created make-believe characters to snoop and to try to recruit informers, while also collecting data and contents of communications between players". The latest revelation comes from classified documents leaked by Edward Snowden.

More from News Analysis

NS logo is seen in this file photo. AP image[/caption]

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

However both reports point that the documents don't give an indication of any successful counter-terrorism strike or attack being foiled via the spying on World of Warcraft or Second Life.

The Guardian report adds that the producer of World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment said that they "unaware of any surveillance taking place."