The latest revelations from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have taken a bizarre turn with the claim that American and British spies have been posing and playing as orcs and elves on the popular multiplayer online game World of Warcraft – potentially spying on up to 50 million people.
Spy chiefs at the NSA began to fear in 2008 that online games such as Second Life and Warcraft could become forums for covert communications between terrorists – enabling them to move money and to plot atrocities, all the while hiding among the millions of virtual gamers all with online alter-egos.
Newly released documents from the hundreds of thousands stolen by Snowden from the NSA reveal that real secret agents have been operating in virtual gaming worlds tracking millions of players – even going as far as attempting to recruit online informants while playing.