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Can you be added to a watchlist for playing a video game?
- Zikes 11y agoAt this point I honestly would not be surprised if playing Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes[1] would land a person on a watch list of some sort. [1] http://www.keeptalkinggame.com/ http://www.keeptalkinggame.com/
- Laaw 11y agoBut there's no real value in adding someone who plays this game to a watchlist. If analysts are discounting the value of membership to a watchlist because of the amount of noise such as what you're suggesting, then the watchlist isn't going to help the organization that's keeping it. From a strictly practical standpoint, there is an incentive to keep watchlists small, focused, and accurate, otherwise they lose meaning.
- Zikes 11y agoBut there's already overwhelming evidence that those watchlists are not small, focused, or accurate. I think they serve a different purpose: to be able to manufacture an excuse when it is convenient. We're far enough past "innocent until proven guilty" that we've manufactured a plethora of new tools and processes to support nearly any unconstitutional actions against citizens.
- Laaw 11y agoAnd I think your comments are the defensive result of an emotional reaction to your helplessness in the face of an overpowering perceived adversary. When you create an us/them narrative, you might not be the only one who plays into it, just remember that.
- Zikes 11y agoI admit to a fair amount of emotionality in the face of a persistent and overwhelming attack on my privacy by my own government, and I have zero shame in that admission. Perhaps if more people played into that, we would not be in this situation.
- pavel_lishin 11y agoNone of what you said makes his/her comments wrong. You're just accusing him/her of being emotional, without addressing the substance.
- Laaw 11y agoI'm actually asserting there is no substance, just emotional rhetoric. I was further implying the conclusions weren't drawn with sound logic, so their validity is under question.
- Mickydtron 11y agoI think our watchlists are already past "small, focused, and accurate". edit: Zikes beat me to it, and said it better.
- bediger4000 11y agothere is an incentive to keep watchlists small, focused, and accurate I think there is no incentive to keep watch lists small or focused or accurate. In fact, there's a huge disincentive for that. If some name (or other identifying info) gets on a watch list, and then someone makes a judgement call to take that name/info off the list, and then the person identified by that name or info does something violent and/or stupid, whichever agency the judgement caller works for, and the call him/herself would come under enormous, very unpleasant scrutiny. The 9/11 thing about "failing to connect the dots" almost certainly weighs heavily on every one connected with watch lists. There's zero incentive for any outsider to call for a name or other info removal for exactly the same reason. What if...? becomes the single overriding concern.
- Laaw 11y agoThere's no value in a tag if it doesn't mean anything, and if membership on a watchlist is merely another way of saying "this person played a video game once", then analysts are going to discount membership to the watchlist.
- bediger4000 11y agoThe lists probably have no value to the analysts anyway. As you note, names/ID info are put on the list by numbskulls, not for any good reason. The reason the lists exist is to cover FBI and DHS bureaucratic ass if some long shot "terrorism" event happens - "Hey, they were on the watchlist - we connected those dots!"
- cryoshon 11y ago"People I meet jokingly suggest I must be on a watchlist. Humour tinged with the tiniest sliver of doubt. Others joke that they won’t play the game because they’ll be added to one. We like to believe that our behaviour isn’t affected, the panopticon has no hold over us, but there remains an insidious fear that our self-censorship is inescapable and manifest. Should I google that word, or visit that site? Or use that encryption method? Or play that game? Maybe not." And this is exactly why totalitarian surveillance can't be allowed to metastasize any further. The mere existence of the capability to spy on people's thoughts causes self-censorship and conformity.
- bediger4000 11y agoI personally think twice before googling for some term(s) that aren't related to pop stars and tween celebrities. I am censoring myself already. When it's revealed that the FBI has manipulated at least one politician because of the electronic dossiers they keep, I will be laughing. Bitterly.
- theseatoms 11y agoI purposefully do not hold back when googling. Sure, I sometimes think twice. But I'd rather live freely in the moment than self-censor due to a vague (though admittedly plausible) future totalitarian threat. Or maybe you'd call it poor impulse control. Either way, what a rebel. /s
- semi-extrinsic 11y agoI had some fun googles this summer: was working on building a boat using strip plank construction, informally known as "a stripper". So you end up searching for stuff like "how to vacuum bag a stripper"...
- shalmanese 11y agoIf such a thing were possible, surely Donald Trump's campaign would have imploded already. It's hard to think of anything more threatening to the existing political order than Trump's campaign successes at this point and the lack of anything that's hurt him seems to suggest there hasn't been any underhanded campaigns against him.
- mfoy_ 11y ago> ‘Terrorism’ itself is described as involving ‘violent acts or acts dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure’ which ‘appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population’ or ‘to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion’ An act that is dangerous to property or infrastructure and appears intended to influence the policy of a government is an act of terrorism. So all protesters could be classified as terrorists under this definition? Am I misreading this?
- danharaj 11y agoProtesters are frequently classified as terrorists. Protesters frequently escalate their tactics when non-violent methods fail.
- Mickydtron 11y agoAre there statistics on how often non-violent protesters escalate to violence in the face of failure?
- danharaj 11y agoSounds like a difficult to quantify phenomenon; I don't think statistics would increase clarity. A historian has a better claim to understanding whether or not it is true but I am not one. In other words, I'm full of shit unless someone backs it up.
- nefitty 11y agoYeah, there's an edit button for a reason.
- logfromblammo 11y agoAnd to be fair, police frequently escalate their tactics when faced with non-violent protesters. Those videos are all over YouTube. Less frequent are videos of the peaceful protesters identifying violent or disruptive elements within the protest as police employees. It takes a lot of willpower to keep to the moral high road when you can see the folks walking on it ahead of you getting their asses kicked. The rights to free speech and petition for redress in the U.S. are not universally respected by those targeted by the criticism. In that context, placing a protester on a watchlist has all the appearance of malicious retaliation for exercise of a protected right.
- Theodores 11y agoThe NSA and GCHQ sent spies into online games to seek out terrorist or criminal chat and even to recruit foreign informants, according to leaked documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/video-game-news/10506017/NSA-and-GCHQ-spies-operated-in-games-including-World-of-Warcraft-and-Second-Life.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/video-game... They also have at least one programme to harvest in-game messaging, so, basically, you can either be 'groomed' by snitches or 'hoovered up' by the same machines that eavesdrop on everything else. It would be naive to think otherwise. So long as you have nothing to hide then there is nothing to fear.
- FordPrefectAO 11y agoHas the database of people on the watchlist been leaked? I wonder if anyone I know has been added for playing these games
- sliverstorm 11y agoKey snippet: Imagine a cylindrical prison where every inmate is within line-of-sight to a central pillar. You can see out from the pillar but not into it. Prisoners never know when they are being watched so must constantly act as if they are under surveillance [...] The key insight being that the mere possibility of surveillance is enough to change behaviour [...] a panopticon derives its power from the awareness of its subjects. In fact, belief in the existence of it is the sole requirement. Neither intent, nor reality are necessary for control. Suddenly casts things in a completely different light for me. What if, for example, the Snowden leaks were on purpose? What if we were supposed to notice the FBI plane above Baltimore? What if the facility in Utah was really just an empty building, and the goal was not to record all phone calls but to make you think they could?
- hyperion2010 11y agoEvery additional person you add to a watchlist is one more piece of hay for the haystack. They can't even watch the people that they are directly told about by mental health professionals. Feel free to be paranoid about watchlists, but I'm more worried about the fact that such behavior stinks of complete and utter incompetence of people who think adding all 300 million US citizens to one is a remotely productive idea.
- pavel_lishin 11y agoThis isn't a good thing. It just means that any one of us can be pulled in for interrogation, while actual villains get lost in the haystack. Two wrongs for the price of one!
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago>They can't even watch the people that they are directly told about by mental health professionals. And this is why there is a distrust of mental health professionals. Why would you seek help if it could result in being watched if not worse. Imagine if doctors reported drug users to the police; people would rather risk handling an overdose on their own than getting help and then being punished.
- nefitty 11y agoThat is already a real problem among hard drug users. Some deaths occur because the overdose's company flee fearing prosecution for their own drug use.
- crpatino 11y ago> Every additional person you add to a watchlist is one more piece of hay for the haystack. That's only valid under the assumption that the people doing the adding do care about the haystack problem. If their managers set quotas, the quotas will be met; damned if innocents get harassed and criminals get lost in the crowd.
- bazillion 11y agoNo, you cannot be added to a watchlist for playing a video game. There's a multi-analyst system for reviewing the criteria for adding someone to a watchlist, and under no circumstances is someone going to be added without a legitimate nexus to terrorism. Terrorism might be ambiguous to define in a document, but it's pretty cut-and-dry in actual practice. There are people who attend terrorist camps, and there are people who visited a terrorist forum. The first is definitely a terrorist, and the second (by itself) is not. Theoretically, if a system rewarded analysts by how many people they watchlisted, then you might have the possibility for people to try to game the system in order to up their numbers (get promotions, bonuses, etc.). That's not even remotely the case, however. The system that is in place is one that takes putting someone on a watchlist very seriously, as it can have an impact on that person's life. Not only that, but it adds a lot of noise to the whole, and could end up taking away from the effort to identify real terrorists. How do I know all this? I helped build the system. Feel free to ask questions, but obviously I have to stay within what is allowable (unclassified), which admittedly isn't much but at least can shed light on the "why" of the matter.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago>under no circumstances is someone going to be added without a legitimate nexus to terrorism. I'll put that up there with every other time a government has promised that they will not abuse their power.
- nefitty 11y agoIf someone is involved in radical or extremist politics online and is an extremely skilled war/shooter game player how would that not have a bearing on whether that person is a potential threat or not? It seems to me that there is a higher possibility that the gamer will have impetus to act using his skillset than a counterpart armchair anarchist or fascist who is only surveying and studying the literature.
- bazillion 11y agoPlaying a war/shooter simulation is a far cry from gaining skills useful in real-life combat, urban or otherwise. For one, using a controller or keyboard to aim makes you better at using a controller or keyboard to aim -- that has zero bearing on whether or not you can aim a firearm. Not to mention that using that as criteria for watchlisting someone would be grounds for reprimand and/or review of every watchlisting decision the analyst has made (which is looking for reasons to fire that analyst).