Gamers must be reeling from the news that US and British spying agencies have been snooping on internet games. See Agency spies snooped on online gaming worlds, including World of Warcraft, Second Life and Xbox Live:
In fact, there have been so many FBI, CIA, and Pentagon spooks kicking around as elves, Orcs and supermodels, a "deconfliction" group is needed to avoid them all colliding into each other, according to the newly released, top-secret documents.
Short on the heals of that revelation we learn that eight big U.S. tech firms put an open letter online to the President and Congress asking for transparency and oversight of government internet spying. They must be feeling the heat from their customers. And they probably have good reason to worry. It seems like an easy entry point for some foreign competitors who might offer privacy and steal away customers.
Actually, there's some irony here. As NakedSecurity writer Lee Munson remarks, many of the same principles espoused by the tech coalition could be applied to themselves given how much of individuals' private data outfits like Google and Facebook collect.
As for the spy agencies, one has to wonder whether they have separate departments in which the agents do nothing but play games on the internet all day. Government agencies are probably big on giving awards to workers. Do you suppose they give them rewards for achieving the upper levels in the online games they play? What a job.
While we're at it, we might also give some thought to the agents who sit in a windowless office all day long searching porn sites for illegal content. That could very well be a career climax for many of them.
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