Big Brother is watching! NSA targets SL!

[Kyloo1488313263]

I thought this was a joke until I saw THIS ARTICLE from the ACLU. 

The highlight from the article, which mentions SL by name, is this paragraph:

"The spies pose as fellow gamers in order to collect intelligence, including communications content and geolocation information; identify players' online social networks; and even recruit informants. So many U.S. intelligence agents participate in this surveillance effort that the intelligence community had to establish teams of referees called "deconfliction" groups, who help to prevent spies from clashing with each other in these fantasy worlds."

In other words, there are so many spies on SL that they've had to set up special teams to keep all of them from stumbling over each other!

I've got just three questions for LL, and I'm sure most of us would love to hear what they've got to say for themselves:

1. Did you know this was going on?

2. Will you sign on and endorse the USA Freedom Act, as Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo and DOZENS of others have, denouncing this activity and calling for legislation to put an end to it?

3. As every bit of this data collection is in direct violation of the TOS and Community Standards, will you BAN any accounts engaged in this warrantless surveillance activity?

[Kenbro Utu]

You are way late to the Party.  But don't hold your breath, you will not get a response from Linden Lab.

[Griffin Ceawlin]

---

Kyloo wrote:

1. Did you know this was going on?

---

Not when it was actually happening, but it's been a topic of discussion here for at least the past week. You're a little late to the party.

---

2. Will you sign on and endorse the

USA Freedom Act

, as Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo and DOZENS of others have, denouncing this activity and calling for legislation to put an end to it?

---

I'm more concerned with the collection of my data by some of those corporations than I am with the NSA following me around SL, or anywhere else.

---

3. As every bit of this data collection is in direct violation of the TOS and Community Standards, will you BAN any accounts engaged in this warrantless surveillance activity?

---

Who you askin'? LL? They're not going to comment. And certainly not here. But do you really think they could keep the NSA out when they can't keep out regular users who have been banned? :smileyvery-happy:

[Amethyst Jetaime]

---

Kyloo wrote:

1. Did you know this was going on?

---

Yes,  Someone from LL to gave a brown bag talk to the NSA about using SL to spy on terrorists.

---

Kyloo wrote:

2. Will you sign on and endorse the

USA Freedom Act

, as Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo and DOZENS of others have, denouncing this activity and calling for legislation to put an end to it?

---

I find this is a joke as all those companies record as much data about you as they can get and use it for their own profit.  Like Griff that concerns me more than the NSA. The proposed law should include corporations and everyone else too.  Now that I could get behind.

 

 

---

Kyloo wrote:

3. As every bit of this data collection is in direct violation of the TOS and Community Standards, will you BAN any accounts engaged in this warrantless surveillance activity?

---

No.  They encouraged it (see answer to 1 above).  Even if they disagree with it as a US company they can't interfere with a government agent doing their job as long as what they are doing is legal.  Further you agreed to the TOS which incorporates the official Privacy Policy by reference.  That policy says in Section 3:

"...Linden Lab may disclose your Personal Information or other account-related information under the following circumstances:... In order to report to law enforcement authorities, or assist in their investigation of suspected illegal or wrongful activity, or to report any instance in which we believe a person may be in danger;"

 

Don't get me wrong, I am totally opposed to the spying that has been or is still going on.  But the remedy lies in convincing Congress to put a stop to it.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

If you don't receive satisfactory answers from LL, will you be quitting or staying on?

[Dresden Ceriano]

---

Kyloo wrote:

1. Did you know this was going on?

---

Years ago, when I was still quite naive about the ways of the virtual world, I was propositioned by a child avatar.  My first thought was that this was some sort of disgusting pedo perv.  My second thought was that this could very well be a member of law enforcement trying to discover who among the SL population were disgusting pedo pervs, in some sort of Dateline type sting operation.  Therefore, my answer is that, while I wasn't really aware that this sort of activity was taking place, I certainly wasn't laboring under the delusion that it wasn't entirely possible.

 

---

Kyloo wrote:

2. Will you sign on and endorse the

USA Freedom Act

, as Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo and DOZENS of others have, denouncing this activity and calling for legislation to put an end to it?

---

I support the idea behind this legislation, but not particularly because of my participation in SL.  I simply feel as if these agencies have overstepped their bounds.  I also believe that something should be done to reel in companies which do the same thing, if not worse.

 

---

Kyloo wrote:

3. As every bit of this data collection is in direct violation of the TOS and Community Standards, will you BAN any accounts engaged in this warrantless surveillance activity?

---

I don't know that this "data collection" is in violation of anything... simply because I have no idea what data has been collected nor am I privy as to how it's been done.  If all they've done is have agents sign up, go inworld and talk to people, I see that as nothing more harmful than a cop talking to people on the street in RL.  If they're accessing LL servers to collect the records and chat logs of everyone in SL, that's a different story... but, I haven't seen any evidence that this is what they've done.

...Dres

[RudolphFarquhar]

---

Dresden Ceriano wrote:

 

Years ago, when I was still quite naive about the ways of the virtual world, I was propositioned by a child avatar.

---

That same thing happened to me, too!

Mind you, at the time I had styled my avatar to look like Michael Jackson . . .

**********Rudi**********

 

[Knowl Paine]

My opinion on what LL's unofficial non-response will be:

 

1. Did you know this was going on? Yes, what did you want us to do? We are a business that operates with permission from a State. In the heightened terror war, you're either with the government, or you are a harbor of terrorism and you deserve to be shunned by all of humanity.

2. Will you sign on and endorse the USA Freedom Act, as Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo and DOZENS of others have, denouncing this activity and calling for legislation to put an end to it? We have no intention of supporting an Act that will make something that is already prohibited, unlawful.

3. As every bit of this data collection is in direct violation of the TOS and Community Standards, will you BAN any accounts engaged in this warrantless surveillance activity? No, we will not ban them. Users are responsible for their accounts. Should any agency contracted to perform services for the federal government violate the civil liberties of another person, that agency is wholly liable for the actions of its agents. 

 

 

[Jenny Beale]

NSA records any and all electronic comunication they can get there hands on in any and all countries as well as international waters. That includes every phone call, fax. IM, text message,  game coversation, and this very post.

They even had to build a special 25,000 sq foot facility for $2 billion USD in Utah called "The Utah Data Center" to store it all.

With at least millions of tera bites of info colected and stored every day i wish them the best of luck finding what they are looking for in that mess.

Serous information overload.

 

None of this is even close to being a secrete.

[RudolphFarquhar]

I have worked out why so many people spell and punctuate badly here, and torture grammar so that the content of their posts is less than comprehensible!

It's so that the NSA's computers reject the communications as being human generated, and spend ridiculous amounts of computing power and time attempting (unavailingly, of course) to crack the encryption . . .

Unless the recognition routines were written by ESL and semi-literate programmers (as most of them are, in my experience) and incorporate a degree of AI - that's Artificial Ignorance.

**********Rudi**********

[Studio09]

For a brief time back in the late '90s I used to read a usenet newsgroup, I think it was misc.survivalism, where quite a few posters would include a sig file that contained lines of trigger words to mess with whatever government agency was capturing all the on-line text.  So this kind of surveillance has been going on for quite some time.  I guess the issue now is not that they are recording this data but that they are pursuing easier ways to tie it back to real people.

Back then the FBI was using the data to crack down on child pornography.  That may be why SL is targeted now and why LL will cooperate.

[jwenting]

---

Studio09 wrote:

For a brief time back in the late '90s I used to read a usenet newsgroup, I think it was misc.survivalism, where quite a few posters would include a sig file that contained lines of trigger words to mess with whatever government agency was capturing all the on-line text.  So this kind of surveillance has been going on for quite some time.  I guess the issue now is not that they are recording this data but that they are pursuing easier ways to tie it back to real people.

Back then the FBI was using the data to crack down on child pornography.  That may be why SL is targeted now and why LL will cooperate.

---

Not the best source of "evidence" of such things, a good portion of "survivalists" are clinically paranoid individuals with no proof of their ideas that "the government" is keeping tabs on them at all times.

Of course past Snowden they have at least in part been shown correct, but I seriously doubt the majority of them are flagged as more than "harmless nutcase, don't bother reading his emails" in any NSA file

[Ceka Cianci]

---

jwenting wrote:

---

Studio09 wrote:

For a brief time back in the late '90s I used to read a usenet newsgroup, I think it was misc.survivalism, where quite a few posters would include a sig file that contained lines of trigger words to mess with whatever government agency was capturing all the on-line text.  So this kind of surveillance has been going on for quite some time.  I guess the issue now is not that they are recording this data but that they are pursuing easier ways to tie it back to real people.

Back then the FBI was using the data to crack down on child pornography.  That may be why SL is targeted now and why LL will cooperate.

---

Not the best source of "evidence" of such things, a good portion of "survivalists" are clinically paranoid individuals with no proof of their ideas that "the government" is keeping tabs on them at all times.

Of course past Snowden they have at least in part been shown correct, but I seriously doubt the majority of them are flagged as more than "harmless nutcase, don't bother reading his emails" in any NSA file

---

just the loud ones are really, just like with any type of group..

not all survivalists are extremists..

they just believe in being able to handle lifes ups and downs..

like having 6 months worth of salary saved up  and enough food and so on to be able to live the same always..more self suficiant rather than relying on utility companies..no matter the shape of the economy or if they were to lose thier job..they will still be in the same shape as they were before a crash..

things like this..

just as with most groups ..the loudest sets the tone..

 

our farm is set up to be very self reliant..we barely even noticed anything from the last crash..

the nut jobs are the ones doing it because they are paranoid..they tend to have the biggest mouths also for being the ones wanting to go underground lol

 

 

[Perrie Juran]

 

I have read some statistics that say that no major metro area in the U.S. has more than a one weeks supply of food on hand in total (including what people have in their homes) at any given time.  If something disrupts the supply line it could be disastrous.

If you want to see this in operation just look what happens when a snow storm is predicted.  Stores sell out their milk, bread, eggs, etc. 

It's been said that the thin veneer of civilization is only three meals thick.

[Studio09]

The reason for including what they considered "trigger" words such as bomb, communism, guns, etc was to flag messages so that the agencies monitoring would waste their time investigating completely irrelevant text.

I do know that the FBI was monitoring the internet to investigate child pornography back in the early to mid 90's cause they investigated me.  I had become the system admin of our first Unix server back then.  I downloaded and installed a pgp server from a Scandinavian site cause it had better encryption than that legally available in the US.  I gather that a lot of child pornographers also used pgp servers/clients from that site.  The FBI traced my IP back to our network servers so they called and questioned our postmaster (he managed our mail server) about me.  Also when I was the hostmaster (managed out DNS server) I was contacted by the secret service about someone on our network who had left a threatening message on a whitehouse web page. So I do know various agencies where monitoring the internet and investigating some of what they found.