Terrorist In Second Life?

Er, I think we discussed that one to death two weeks ago already....

Opps! Missed it! sorry.

*reads article* People are sick. Even in a virtual world you can't escape war and terrorism.

How can they transfer money in and out and remain anonymous?

Thats a very good question.

Anyone know the answer?

Not me. SL requires payment info to do anything like that. Which always has your ID on file (credit card, paypal, exc).

The anonymity is achieved if the money comes in through one av buying L$, the money then changing hands in-world in ways designed to prevent following its course, and the money eventually being withdrawn by an apparently unrelated av. That's the basic template for money-laundering of all kinds, whether you try it in SL or RL. The transaction feeding money into the laundering contraption is not anonymous but seems perfectly legitimate. Same for the transaction taking the money out. The point is to make them appear to be completely unrelated transactions, so money goes in "dirty" but comes out "clean."

That entire article is based on the speculation of one so-called terrorism expert. There's not a single fact to back any of it up. It's just pure sensationalist fear-mongering that started with an article in The Australian - A paper owned by Rupert Murdoch's New Corp. who also owns MySpace. Since SL and MySpace are competitors in the social networking space I'd be willing to bet that it was written specifically to damage SL's reputation. It's a pity to see that the transformation of mainstream media from news to sensationalism and propaganda has spread beyond the borders of the United States.

Times Online is censoring comments as well. I wrote one saying that if that's the level of journalistic integrity I can expect from their publication, I'll make a point of never reading it again. It never showed up in the comments section. Surprise surprise.

Astute observation, Chip. I have yet to see any of these so called experts on any talk show or what not actually know what they are talking about. Mr Murdoch's FoxNews is full of the experts and they are all fuul of crap. I do enjoy reading The New York Post though, soem of the funniest headlines come from that paper. It is truly a shame that journalistic integrity, especially here, seems now to be the exception, rather than the rule.

The point is not whether it has happened or is happening - there is no evidence of that I know of, and we have no way of knowing, since the bad guys are not likely to be forthcoming. The point is, the SL environment is conducive to all these bad things, and that really does need to be thought about. Preferably without scaremongering from the yellow journalism crowd, though I suppose that is too much to ask for.

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He's a knob but it's still a quality newspaper. I alternate it with The Guardian on a daily basis to balance out the politics.

You can say the same thing about any communication medium, and there's nothing about SL that makes it uniquely suited for terrorist recruiting. Quite the contrary, actually, since any "training" they might try to do in SL would either be completely visible to the public or would have to take place on private hidden sims, in which case there's no way this terrorist "expert" would know about it. It's just sensationalist speculation. Nothing more.

You know....if you use one of the goals of terrorists to interfere with a society's every day life, and to disrupt commerce and cause panic............you might say LL has been acting terroristic at times.......

Then so have been the owners of Ginko, LOL. Ginko Jihad!

Too bad. I love their commercials with the Cavemen...............oh wait a minute.....never mind. Ginko.

Do the research on the terrorism "expert" cited by the article; he's pretty flaky from what I've seen (his one book notwithstanding).

The source for this was one (1) paper put out about the theoretical possibilities of terrorism in Second Life by an Australian research group. It was hence followed up by four or five newspaper articles, all within the News Corp empire - one of which also cited "World of Warcraft" as a terrorist training tool.

Heres a crackdown on the austrialiannews article: http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/07/terrorism_in_se.html

Ithink i'll download a gun and terrorize myself!

"On the darker side, there are also weapons armouries in SL where people can get access to guns, including automatic weapons and AK47s."

"No, actually, they can't. Guns are real-life artifacts, which cannot be downloaded from the Internet. I wish they could be -- many times I've wished I could download a burrito. "

Hmm this terrorism sounds like a turn based mmorpg, where you level up:

"Also, what is the difference between a "jidhadi terrorist" and "elite jihadist terrorist group"? Is there some sort of certification process? When you become an elite jihadist terrorist, is there a graduation ceremony involving sashes?"

De Ja Vu...

Fox News and Jack Thompson have about the same level of bias and sanity, in my opinion. If you don't know who Jack Thompson is and why I quoted that part above, I'd recommend looking him up. Scary bad crazy.

I hate them both.

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Everybody keeps dissing Fox News, and it looks to me like they don't know what they're talking about.

Fox News mainly does two different kinds of shows: Opinion shows, which it is mostly famous for, and which in general are conservative bias-fests and plainly presented as such; and straight news shows, which are not bias-fests at all.

If you are talking about opinion shows, they are about as biased toward the right as most opinion shows elsewhere are toward the left. What makes Fox opinions stand out is that nearly all TV is caught up in the left-liberal outlook and Fox, obviously, is not by design. So it sticks out like a sore thumb. It also drives liberal ideologues nuts, because now there is a network with national reach and a major audience share which, among other things, delights in calling them on their crap.

Compare them on straight news, and it is a very different story. An honest journalist carefully separates editorial comment from news, and works hard at keeping them clearly separated. I have a lot of experience in journalism, and frankly, the willingness of liberal media to twist the news and spin the stories they present as "objective" news reports until they amount to ill-disguised editorials is appalling. TV is perhaps the worst medium in this regard. It has become utterly unprofessional, IMO. I watch very little TV any more as a result, except for breaking news. But I do watch enough to keep tabs on it. Do your own research on a news story with an idelogical dimension sometime and you will quickly be as appalled as I am when you figure out how you are being manipulated by that sincere-looking news anchor on your screen. Research means: get facts, compare, weed out spin, compare. Did I mention compare?

This will get a lot of Orwellian geese to start honking madly, but when Fox does news (as opposed to opinion), it really does play the news fairly straight, and they really do make a serious point of finding and honestly presenting the opposing viewpoint, which is what an honest journalist is supposed to do and takes pride in doing. Don't believe me? Then you're not looking at Fox, only dissing it. Try it; you'll see. The one way they do add a news "spin" is with some of the minor, "color" stories they choose to present. Fox is where you'll find out about the idiot elementary school principal in North Carolina who suspended the little girl and called the cops because she had a "knife" - one of those little plastic picnic knives her mother packed in her lunch bag so she could spread the pat of margarine on her muffin. (Zero tolerance for weapons, you know.) But they'll even play that story straight; the bias comes from choosing it for national play to begin with. That kind of news "bias" is something you can live with.

Where to go for hard news if you are a long-time news junkie like I am? In a word, the - Internet. Start with the Associated Press site; there will be most of the national or international stories you'll read in the next day's paper anyway, but before the newspaper editors got their hands on them. Add Google News, for a different take on what's currently news using a computer search algorithm - and more links to alternate viewpoints than you can shake a stick at. Then pick a story you are most interested in and google it, follow up links, weed out the opinion and spin, and piece the facts together yourself. You'll see.

Thats because just like in RL in here you have libs and repubs.... If your a repub you like Fox if your a lib you like CNN. Same old stuff. I love Fox myself. (The flames start here).

I just love how they are all saying the same thing about Second Life. For once both sides agree.

I've never seen Fox news so I can't comment on it. I have seen Sky news which is owned by the same people and they are good with their news, but so are the BBC and they get a lot of stick from both the left and right.

However there are plenty of good news stories around about Second Life, for some reason people on the forums seem to revel in picking up on the bad news stories. People like the person in the original video clip and Robert Scoble do not like Second Life and make their views clearly known. However those people are biased, this isn't objective reporting. Right at the start of the clip the lady points out that this guy has been predicting the collapse of Second Life for over a year.

Ok and thats true but the fact of the matter is not if he likes SL but what he is saying is right on the money. Like him or not, hes right.