The latest leaked National Security Agency documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden have been revealed today, indicating that the NSA and and its UK sister agency GCHQ have entered into online gaming communities, including Xbox Live, to look for terrorist activities.
The documents, which were first created in 2008, were published by The Guardian today. Titled "Exploiting Terrorist Use of Games & Virtual Environments", it states that services like Xbox Live, World of Warcraft, Second Life and many other online gaming communities were considered to be a "target-rich communications network" for agents to enter and find terrorists.
The documents don't go into specifics on how the information is obtained inside these gaming networks and The Guardian points out that there is also no evidence that terrorists were in fact using these services to communicate with each other.
Microsoft has not commented on this new NSA document leak. Last week, the company confirmed that it would be beefing up encryption of its online services, in part because of fears that agencies like the NSA are somehow intercepting their data. Earlier today, Microsoft joined with other tech companies to ask the U.S. government for a reform of its current surveillance policies.
Source: The Guardian | Image via Microsoft
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