(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Video games used to be a safe space for young men to express themselves, but the U.S. government is now treating them as terrorist breeding grounds.
A Feb. 28 report from the Government Accountability Office gives the latest insight on how U.S. agencies are infiltrating gaming servers, revealing that the FBI increased its efforts towards that end in 2023.
“Officials said in 2023, the FBI worked to increase engagement with gaming and gaming-adjacent companies for the annual meeting and on outreach efforts with the program manager. Officials said that as the FBI works with more companies, it continues to learn how companies operate, the type of behavior and content companies see on their platforms, and the extent to which companies report information as tips,” the GAO report said.
The GAO didn’t chastise the FBI for its efforts to monitor gamers, but said the bureau should have a strategy for identifying companies to engage with and the goals and desired outcomes of those engagements.
The GAO cites several extremist attacks that were allegedly plotted or fomented on gaming platforms.
For instance, the May 2022 Buffalo mass shooter livestreamed his attack on a video streaming platform. However, the GAO report didn’t mention that the shooter was talking to a with a “retired federal agent”—which, along with raising alarming questions about that attack, shows that the government has already been monitoring gamers for years.
The GAO report also implausibly alleged that the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill uprising was planned on gaming platforms—even though the Justice Department hasn’t revealed evidence of that.
“For example, according to a National Fusion Center Association official, social media users plotting the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol used code words for weapons, so they could covertly discuss plans to bring weapons to the Capitol,” the report said, failing to provide evidence for this claim.
While the FBI and other agencies said mass surveillance of gamers is necessary to prevent terrorism, an alternative motive was revealed last year. NBC News reported last April that the Biden administration was increasing its surveillance of gamers in response to classified Pentagon documents that were leaked onto a Discord server.
Citing an anonymous administration official and a congressional official who was briefed on the matter, NBC News reported at the time that the Biden White House is “looking at expanding the universe of online sites that intelligence agencies and law enforcement authorities track.”
NBC News also quoted former NSA top lawyer Glenn Gerstell, who claimed that “we do not have nor do we want a system where the United States government monitors private internet chats.”
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
