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No, 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, a
by bazillion 11y ago
No, 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).
- nefitty 11y agoThose are fair points, but use of simulated training programs is on the rise. I sincerely doubt that there is absolutely no link between virtual skill and real world skill.
- krapp 11y agoI would argue that being extremely skilled at videogame warfare still makes someone an "armchair revolutionary." It's not sufficiently removed from 'studying the literature' to warrant concern, any more than being really good at horror games versus reading a lot of horror fiction makes someone more likely in the latter case to commit grisly murders than the former. It may serve as an outlet but I don't believe it necessarily serves as a catalyst. The more time extremists spend online killing virtual people, rather than offline killing actual people, the better.
- keenerd 11y agoThere are watchlists and there are watchlists. What are your thoughts on the events of last year when Linux Journal readers were flagged by XKEYSCORE?
- bazillion 11y agoXKEYSCORE is not a watchlisting system, but an NSA system. Watchlisting is not conducted by the NSA -- it's conducted by the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) and the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC). I have no idea about the events you're talking about. That said, XKEYSCORE isn't a flagging system at all, but more like conducting a google search. So, bad input always equals bad output.