Do Virtual Worlds Like Second Life Pose RL (Real Life) Asymmetric Threats?

This question (paraphrased) was originally posted as a "Open ATCA Dialogue" question and subsequently as a LinkedIn Question:

Background:

The US government has begun a project -- codenamed Reynard -- to develop ways to spot extremists who are using virtual worlds like Second Life, World of Warcraft, Call of Duty 4 and others. Reynard, a data-mining project from the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), is an exploratory effort to monitor activity in virtual worlds and online games and then model what extremist activity in those worlds would look like. The Office of the Director of the National Intelligence (ODNI) recently released a Congressionally mandated report on various data-mining projects of which Reynard is just one. It is known that the CIA and other US Agencies have a presence in Second Life and that IARPA has investigated Linden Lab's world as well.

Question:

Do Virtual Worlds Like Second Life Pose RL (Real Life) Asymmetric Threats? And: What can/should Second Life users do to identify and report activities such as virtual terrorist training camps, etc?

Opinion:

I personally believe that true "community" is the best defense against terrorism. Knowing who your real & virtual neighbors are keeps terrorists from hiding in our midst.

Terrorists like to keep their RL and SL seperate.

I knew it! That newb that was chasing me around Waterhead with his Willie out was CIA.I could tell by the cheap suit.

To answer the question, No. And I wish the government would stop wastimg my tax dollars studying computer games.

LOL!

You mean those griefers in the transformer suits are terrorists? Lobbing russian-made prim-granades into the parcel next door? Training in advanced orbiting techniques and placing IEDs along Linden Roads? And I thought that crashing my motorcycle was the result of crossing sim borders.

As for your question: No
You are are looking for a "community" that is suspicious of its neighbours. Fingerpointing at anything that they don't like. What is this? 1940? I think we have enough ARing going on without adding hysteria and another nifty way to grief the innocent.

You can rest easy, though. I hear a good number of terrorist will flee in terror at the sight of scantily-clad females. We're well protected.

Maybe we ought to leave the fear-mongering to the press. I'm sure there are a few military-type of RP places you could join to exercise your god-given right to be paranoid.

What the heck is an "asymmetric threat"?

As for the second question, first of all I can't think of anything less effective for training a real world terrorist than a "virtual" training camp in SL. Any troop of Boy Scouts would wipe the floor with terrorists trained in this way.

Secondly, how would you tell a sim whose occupants have a sinister RL purpose apart from an innocuous combat roleplay sim?

Thirdly, I can't think of a stupider idea from the standpoint of security. LL logs ALL chat and IMs...how in the world are terrorists going to communicate with each other without being spotted immediately?

I used to say there were no stupid questions, but it appears that the government, and the OP, have managed the feat.

governments and colleges!

Mitch Kapor did say the Pragmatists were coming...

Attention all SL Spooks. Be on the lookout for this guy....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uwOL4rB-go

Mr. Franklin said something about this.

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

When I was a student, I wasted someone's tax dollars playing computer games.

And in those days, they were bloody crap ones, too.

Okay, this thread's a joke, right?

There's a difference between playing them, and "studying" them. If any child of mine told me he was studying a computer game, he'd be on the short bus, on his way to home schooling.

What thread on this Forum isn't?

Brenda I refer you to teh thread "Is this a problem" - I think you must met that guy (scroll down teh thread)

Sounds like marketing-babble to me..


Though I don't think SL is any great resource for real terrorists, I could easily script/build an object that walks somebody through the process of making a pipe bomb. Or some other kind of improvised explosive device. Er.. I could if I knew how to do that stuff, anyway.


We're talking government work here.. Throw more money at it!!


Do they log voice?

Do they have a lot of people that read, random example, Arabic and go through all those logs on a regular basis, looking for potent terrorists?

Mine are deeply serious and intelligent questions posed so that I can get my doctorate at Furryland University. You, Brenda, simply lol around your Sim drinking whiskey and snarfing back apple pies, while serious-minded folk study the whys and wherefores of our industrious and (obviously infiltrated) society. Leave it to me, Brenda, I shall seek out these miscreants and deal firmly with them.
I just hope you will stand behind me in the trenches ...

I guessed they got pretty confused about the 'moles' in SL?

Someone was asking about starting an army on a previous thread - maybe we should put all these peopel in touch with each other? hey, why is everyone so militaristic today? Have I missed something in teh real world? Is theere STILL a real world out there?

/me makes a list of everyone who has read this thread and send it off the the 'friendly' officials.
They know what to do with you type of people.

Define real world.

Well, given how many 'surveys' that crop up in RA are being proposed by students that are studying something to do with Second Life, that bus should be awfully full.

What happened to gaining degrees in English? Physics? Maths? Proper, good old-fashioned qualifications. What letters would a degree in Second Life put after your name: BSL?

As someone who scripts weapons in SL, I can say that my experience is that SL is not very useful at all for any sort of training for RL combat. For that matter, games like Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six, Metal Gear, Medal of Honor etc are probably not very effective either. Likewise, I doubt that any number of hours spent playing Ace Combat is going to get to ready to fly an F-22 (and flying in SL would be even worse preparation).

But back to SL weaponry, let me explain a few things about guns in SL:

Due to the limitations of the physics engine, most guns in SL utilize bullets that are between 1-2.5m in length, and travel at velocities usually between 75-150 m/s. Compare this with Real Life bullets that are maybe an inch in length and travel at velocities greater than the speed of sound. Combat in SL is also hindered by the fact that all actions have to pass through the central server that runs the simulator code for the region. In addition to the fact that this means that any "training" really wouldn't be very private, there is also the fact that it means that "lag" can be introduced to combat when the simulator cannot process everything in a timely manner or when there is a delay in communications between client and server. Now, with properly scripted weapons that use efficient coding and either lack or allow you to turn off such tacticool but unnecessary features like muzzleflash and shell ejection, you can generally avoid some lag, but there will always be a little bit there. Furthermore, there are limits in the number of people who you can have in a simulator before the basic issues of simulator agent time (the basic amount of time that the simulator has to devote just to coordinating sending information between all of the avatars in the sim) begin to cause lag. I've seen 20-person combat work, with all extraneous scripted objects removed and only efficient weapons used, but once you go much over that, you'r going to wind up introducing a good bit of lag.

And then there's the fact that in order to do so, you would likely have to purchase your own region. Thus you would have to pay USD $1000 plus USD $295 per month to Linden Labs, in the process giving over identifiable information. This simply is not feasible for any illicit organization.

Of course, they could use a "public" combat sandbox such as Rausch.....if you've ever been to the region Combat (sandbox) Rausch (search for "combat" on the map), you'll understand why this would just be absolutely hilarious. Rausch is what combat would be if Salvador Dali and Timothy Leary were the opposing generals.

I don't blame DoD for looking into whether virtual worlds *could* potentially be used as a training ground, I just think that any rational study would find that it is impractical and infeasible.

Bloody Stupid Layabout.
Why not?

HAH HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

(real life laughing on that one)