Could your conduct in World of Warcraft lead to you being singled out as a potential terrorist? It might sound a far-fetched idea, but that's the implication of a new research study called the Reynard Project, which is reportedly being set up by the US Director of National Intelligence.
The aim is apparently to monitor behaviour in MMOs and virtual worlds:
“The cultural and behavioral norms of virtual worlds and gaming are generally unstudied. Therefore, Reynard will seek to identify the emerging social, behavioral and cultural norms in virtual worlds and gaming environments. The project would then apply the lessons learned to determine the feasibility of automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world… If it shows early promise, this small seedling effort may increase its scope to a full project.”
Are virtual environments really fertile recruiting grounds for terrorists? Presumably the aim of Reynard is to find out. Gamers may raise an eyebrow though - with the games industry having spent the last decade weathering accusations that games encourage violence in youngsters, now it seems global terrorism could be added to the charge list against interactive entertainment.
(via Wired Threat Level)
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