ACM TechNews

US Seeks Terrorists in Web Worlds

BBC News (03/03/08) Vallance, Chris

The U.S. government is performing observational studies on normal behavior in online worlds in hopes of eventually developing techniques and tools for uncovering the anomalous activity of terrorist groups. The recent report that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) sent to Congress mentions the project, which is codenamed Reynard. The report describes Reynard as "a seedling effort to study the emerging phenomenon of social [particularly terrorist] dynamics in virtual worlds and large-scale online games and their implications for the intelligence community." After the baseline normative behaviors are identified, Reynard will "then apply the lessons learned to determine the feasibility of automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world." The project is still in its early stages, and will be for research and not operational purposes. ODNI did not reveal which online worlds it will study, and Second Life and World of Warcraft are viewed as not offering the level of security that would attract terrorists. Experts tracking terrorist groups say it is only a matter of time before Jihad worlds emerge online for educating recruits about their techniques.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7274377.stm

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