Gamers targeted by US and British spy agencies

American and British intelligence has been spying on gamers across the world, media outlets have reported, saying that the world’s most powerful espionage agencies packed virtual universes with undercover agents and surreptitiously monitored online fantasy games such as World of Warcraft.

Stories carried by The New York Times, The Guardian, and the US investigative website Pro-Publica said US and British spies have for years trawled online games for terrorists or informants. The stories are based on documents leaked by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden.

Virtual universes like “World of Warcraft” can be massively popular, drawing in millions of players who log months’ worth of real-world time competing with other players for online glory, virtual treasure, and magical loot.

At its height, “World of Warcraft” boasted some 12 million paying subscribers, more than the population of Greece. Other virtual worlds, like Linden Labs’ “Second Life” or the various games hosted by Microsoft’s Xbox — home to the popular science-fiction-themed shoot-em-up “Halo” — host millions more.

Spy agencies have long worried that such games serve as a good cover for terrorists, who could use in-game messaging systems to swap information. In one of the documents cited by media outlets, the NSA warned that virtual-world games could give intelligence targets a place to “hide in plain sight”.

The 82-page-document, published on The New York Times’ website, also noted that opponents could use games to recruit other users or carry out virtual weapons training. Important details, such as how the agencies secured access to gamers’ data, how many players’ information was compromised, or whether Americans were swept up in the spying, were not clear, the Times and ProPublica said.

At the request of Britain’s GCHQ, the NSA began extracting World of Warcraft data from its global intelligence haul, trying to tie specific accounts and characters to Islamic extremism and arms dealing efforts, The Guardian reported.

Intelligence on the fantasy world could eventually translate to real-world espionage success, one of the documents suggested, noting that World of Warcraft subscribers included “telecom engineers, embassy drivers, scientists, the military and other intelligence agencies”.

Another memo also noted that GCHQ had “successfully been able to get the discussions between different game players on Xbox Live”. Meanwhile, so many US spies were roaming around Second Life, that a special “deconfliction” unit was set up to prevent them from stepping on each other’s toes.

Blizzard Activision Inc — creators of the Warcraft series — Linden Labs, and Microsoft did not immediately return messages seeking comment, though the Times cited a Blizzard spokesman as saying that any surveillance “would have been done without our knowledge or permission”.

GCHQ said it had no comment on the stories beside the assertion it operated in “a strict legal and policy framework” with rigorous oversight.