Second Life and WoW ‘plagued by terrorists’
Originally published at Lemmingworks. You can comment here or there.
Second Life and WoW ‘plagued by terrorists’
AUSSIE SECURITY experts claim that Second Life and online games such as World of Warcraft are being used to train terrorists.
According to the Australian newspaper a terror campaign has been waged in Second Life which has left a trail of virtual dead and injured, and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars’ damage.
Apparently there are three jihadi terrorists registered and two elite jihadist terrorist groups in Second Life and they use the site for recruiting and training. This is on top of the Second Life Liberation Army, which has been responsible for some computer-coded atomic bombings of stores on the site.
Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside al-Qa’ida, said terrorists are rehearsing their operations in Second Life because they can’t practice in the real world.
Kevin Zuccato, head of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre in Canberra, says terrorists can gain training in games such as World of Warcraft in a simulated environment, using weapons that are identical to real-world armaments.
So we can expect more terrorist attacks involving broadswords and Heathrow airport to be closed due to suicide dragons.
[Via Slashdot | Second Life & WoW Terrorist Training Camps? and thanks to Catspaw for giving me the heads up on this.
Check out the whole article Virtual terrorists in The Australian.
Now, I always did say that virtual reality and simulations are good learning environments that have applications in the real world, but I was not thinking of this. Personally, I think that this is silly. But then I think about A Rape in Cyberspace by Julian Dibbell (Published in: Village Voice, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 51, December 21, 1993) and I am reminded that we do have to consider the emotional impacts of actions online.