To the National Security Agency analyst writing a briefing to his superiors, the situation was clear: their current surveillance efforts were lacking something. The agency's impressive arsenal of cable taps and sophisticated hacking attacks was not enough. What it really needed was a horde of undercover Orcs.
Once again, the United States is in the silly season known as a presidential election campaign. Many guilds, corporations, and free companies throughout the gaming world will prohibit discussions of politics because who needs the drama? And if political talk is allowed, the leadership of the gaming organization will contain such talk to a dedicated channel. Apparently, those who want to avoid the drama llama are not the only ones taking interest in conversations taking place in the gaming space.
An article in The Intercept looked at a GAO report requested by Representatives Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS) and Seth Magaziner (D-RI) of the House Committee on Homeland Security. Apparently the minority party in the House is concerned with gamers potentially trying to violently overthrow the US government. The report interviewed representatives of five gaming companies, Roblox, Discord, Reddit, and a game company and social media company wishing to remain anonymous.
We can't just pick on the House of Representative. Over in the Senate, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) also ratcheted up the pressure to combat extremism in the gaming space. According to The Intercept's Ken Klippenstein:
The GAO study also follows pressure from Congress to top gaming companies to crack down on extremist content. Last March, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, D-Ill., sent letters to gaming companies Valve, Activision Blizzard, Epic Games, Riot Games, Roblox Corp, and Take-Two Interactive demanding that they take actions to police gamers.
“Unlike more traditional social media companies — which in recent years have developed public facing policies addressing extremism, created trust and public safety teams, and released transparency reports — online gaming platforms generally have not utilized these tools,” Durbin wrote in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland. In the letter, Durbin requested a briefing from the Justice Department on what channels exist “for DOJ and the online video game industry to communicate and coordinate” on the threat of “online video games by extremists and other malicious actors.”
According to Sen. Durbin, online gaming platforms are rife with white supremacist thoughts. In his letter, he called out six games where a survey indicated 30% or more of respondents encountered "white supremacist extremism": Call of Duty (44%), Grand Theft Auto (35%), Valorant (34%), World of Warcraft (31%), Fortnight (30%) and PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds (30%). He also called out Steam, Roblox, and Minecraft for housing white supremacist content.
Apparently the fascination with gamers goes back to at least the Trump administration. According to Klippenstein:
Federal law enforcement and intelligence have long focused on gaming as an avenue for both radicalization and as a backdoor platform for extremists to communicate. A 2019 internal intelligence assessment jointly produced by the FBI, DHS, the Joint Special Operations Command, and the National Counterterrorism Center and obtained by The Intercept warns that “violent extremists could exploit functionality of popular online gaming platforms and applications.” The assessment lists half a dozen U.S.-owned gaming platforms that it identifies as popular, including Blizzard Entertainment’s Battle.net, Fortnite, Playstation Xbox Live, Steam, and Roblox.
Who am I kidding? The fascination goes back a lot further as the opening quote to this post shows. My first article on the subject of governments' and intelligence agencies' interest in online games was published in 2013.
Reading through the report, Appendix II shows gaming platforms pose issues for domestic intelligence agencies like the FBI not encountered when dealing with social media platforms.
Collecting information on gaming platforms. According to I&A [Office of Intelligence and Analysis] officials, personnel collect information from social media platforms, but not gaming platforms. Officials said most gamers prefer private servers where the players they interact with are there by invitation, so I&A personnel would not have access to most game sessions. They also said most gamers communicate via microphone. I&A collects text and images, but not audio. Lastly, officials said personnel are required to collect publicly available information in ways that do not involve interaction with other users, and that their presence is not observable by other users, which would not be possible in most games. (p. 39)
I realize weird things occur with national security implications, such as leaks of equipment specifications surrounding War Thunder or people bragging about access to classified information on Discord. But it looks like the concern in the report is to combat terrorism. I wasn't a big fan of the effort back in 2013 and, to tell the truth, I'm not a big fan of government surveillance while I'm trying to play a game. Do I really have to say hello to Special Agent Smith every time I log into Discord to find out what is going on in my FFXIV free company?
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