I was at a conference on open source intelligence put on last summer by the office of the Director of National Intelligence in the US, and several people from various branches of the intelligence services noted that they were actively seeking virtual ethnographers to work with in understanding how to make better use of virtual worlds. I was a little surprised to hear this, but it seems to grow out of the Army's active use of what they are calling "Human Terrain Teams"--anthropologists and other social scientists embedded in military units. This raises obvious ethical dilemmas. While I don't know if the CIA is meeting in Second Life, I'm hardly as dismissive as Tracy is below. Given that people in the intelligence industry routinely keep blogs and participate on Wikipedia (when they are not adding to the secure Intellipedia, the CIA's secure(r) version of Wikipedia), it doesn't strike me as all that odd that they--like other organizations--might try forms of training in Second Life. Those being sent into Iraq by the US military currently train in Arabic using a system built on the (ironically) Unreal engine, I believe, so Second Life seems like an obvious way to develop training exercises. Although I have no direct experience of this, it also seems very likely to me that many people that would be of interest to a national intelligence force would meet in second life. Sure: including terrorists. I've run into white supremacists (or at least those playing at being white supremacists) in Second Life, and given the terrorist threat of White Nationalists and other hate groups in the US, I can see why you would want to keep an eye on this. Hate groups of all types have made effective use of the internet for recruiting in the past, and despite Second Life's restrictions on hate speech, I would be shocked if they didn't make use of Second Life in this way. Yes, ill-informed statements about new technology can lead to reporting that fuels hyperbolic fear. On the other hand, I would be very disappointed in government agencies charged with gathering knowledge that ignored--as they largely have in the past--open repositories of information. Yes, open information can be used by the enemy as well, but the solution to this problem is to become at least as expert as they are in exploiting that resource. - Alex On Feb 16, 2008 10:07 AM, T. Kennedy <tkennedy@netwomen.ca> wrote:
Subject: Re: [Air-L] Canadian general warns that Wikipedia postings may be aiding the Taliban
Oh but wait, I thought Second Life was a terrorist threat according to IARPA:
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2209187/agency-warns-second-life
(note the line: "the CIA already has a presence in Second Life which it uses for meetings & training" lol - sure!)
Anyone else seeing a trend here? Moral panic? Media hype? Revisiting old hype & fears from internet days gone by?
t
-- -- // // This email is // [X] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais // Social Architect // http://alex.halavais.net //