U.S. Intelligence To Study Online Gaming Behavior

Wired reports that the U.S. government will be using World of Warcraft and other online games to track down terrorist activity. Dubbed the Reynard Project, U.S. Intelligence will begin by profiling online gaming behavior. By studying the profiles, it hopes to automatically detect suspicious behavior and actions.

The cultural and behavioral norms of virtual worlds and gaming are generally unstudied. Therefore, Reynard will seek to identify the emerging social, behavioral and cultural norms in virtual worlds and gaming environments. The project would then apply the lessons learned to determine the feasibility of automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world.

I have no idea what is classified as suspicious online behavior by the U.S. government, but I guess we’ll all find out when the results are in. In the meantime, maybe it’s a good idea for engineers to hold off on making all those explosives.

Source: Wired

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