Saturday, August 04, 2007

Virtual Terror Bollocks


A few days ago
I wrote a post about Al Qaeda training camps being supposedly located in regions so inaccessible that dinosaurs still lived in them

But that was a few days ago

And, as we are being always being reminded, the terror threat is a constantly evolving one

According to an article in
The Australian (an article that just has to be read to be believed) Al Qaeda terror training camps are now being moved into cyberspace...

Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside al-Qa'ida, says it is a new phenomena that, until now, has not been openly discussed outside the intelligence community.

But he says security agencies are extremely concerned about what home-grown terrorists are up to in cyberspace. He believes the dismantling and disruption of military training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan after September 11 forced terrorists to turn to the virtual world.

"They are rehearsing their operations in Second Life because they don't have the opportunity to rehearse in the real world," Gunaratna says. "And unless governments improve their technical capabilities on a par with the terrorists' access to globalisation tools like the internet and Second Life, they will not be able to monitor what is happening in the terrorist world."


"Right, first we pick up the chapati flour and then it's off to Glasgow Airport"


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.

Zuccato told an Australian Security Industry Association conference in Sydney that people intent on evil no longer had to travel to the target they wanted to attack to carry out reconnaissance. He said they could use virtual worlds to create an exact replica and rehearse an entire attack online, including monitoring the response and ramifications.

"We need to start thinking about living, working and protecting two worlds and two realities," Zuccato says.


The word bollocks just doesn't seem adequate

.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Let's not forget about the evil bongo's sinister computer game

Quite a lot of computer games seem to promote 'Stockwell justice' to me and I would sign an e petition to ban them in the blink of an eye.

Stef said...

One of the many absurdities I enjoyed from the article I mentioned in the post is the suggestion that you can learn how to use a Tec-9/ Broadsword/ Jihadist Amulet of Power from playing computer games

The last time I looked real Uzis were not equipped with keyboards and USB ports and tend to be just a little trickier to use effectively than their virtual counterparts - ditto for navigating 767s and exercising unfeasible high G aerobatics which commercial pilots with 20 years+ experience couldn't emulate

but there again when you look at the chillingly realistic graphics and gameplay in an RPG like 'Super Columbine Massacre' you start to think twice

http://tinyurl.com/22q4kg

Anonymous said...

Hi Stef. I don't know of you will recall this, but early on in the War OF Terror, we were informed [sic] that Al-Qaeda were sending information digitally encoded information/messages in pornographic pictures. That kinda died off after a while when people started realising the Govt in hyper lobbox mode. And perhaps you can remember people like Rumsfeld saying that OBL had many underground cities in the mopuntains of Afghanistan like Blowfelt on the Bond movies.

No it seems the PTB have decided the memory matrix is weakened so much that it can recycle its sewage.

Aaaah yes Paul... The good old proof by computer animation. Where dragons, dwarves and pixies live. Long live proof by computer animation. Perhaps they should animate the politicians as having a sence of honesty about them (or has such a necessaryily powerful computer not been engineered yet?)

Anonymous said...

you couldn't make it up...

Sophia said...

"We need to start thinking about living, working and protecting two worlds and two realities,"

Bonne Chance ! They are not even catching up with one reality, the real one, how on earth do you want them to do this for both realities. Oh, yes, terrorists can after all bomb cities and kill people in the virtual world and use the virtual world to train themselves to real world terror.

Every time someone wants to appear smart or to make a publicity for himslef he comes with very shallow ideas about terror. I regret that I am not a researcher in this field, I would get published every tiem I dream of some scary fantasy...