Data mining and profiling could soon become a part of online game worlds, if the US intelligence community has its way.
In the Data Mining Report Act, it is being proposed that suspicious behaviors and actions that occur in virtual world could pose a national security threat. Sound Orwellian? Sure is. This is not the first time that we’ve noted the movements of government into online worlds under the ruse of terrorist and security threats to the nation.
The report comes from the Federation of American Scientists, a group founded in 1945 – after the Manhattan Project was completed – that believes scientists have a duty to warn the public of “potential dangers from scientific and technical advances and to show how good policy could increase the benefits of new scientific knowledge.” The FAS also houses one of the finest secrecy bloggers out there, the Secrecy News blog put together by Steven Aftergood.
