Political Games - Where the fuck’s the reset button?

I swear, you can’t make this shit up:

The American military and intelligence communities are increasingly worried that would-be bin Ladens might gather in a virtual world, to plan a real-life attack. But the spies haven’t given many details, about how it might be done. Now, a Pentagon researcher has laid out how such a terror plot might unfold. The planning ground is World of Warcraft. The main target of this possibly nuclear strike: the White House.

There’s been no public proof to date of terrorists hatching plots in virtual worlds. But online spaces like World of Warcraft are making some spooks, generals and Congressmen extremely nervous. They imagine terrorists rehearsing attacks in these worlds, just like the U.S. military trains with commercial shoot-em-up games. They worry that the massively multiplayer games make it incredibly easy to gather plotters from around the world. But, mostly, virtual worlds are nerve-wracking to spies because they’re so hard to monitor. The accounts are pseudonymous. The access is global. The jargon is thick. And most of the spy agencies’ employees aren’t exactly level-70 shamans.

In a presentation late last week at the Director of National Intelligence Open Source Conference in Washington, Dr. Dwight Toavs, a professor at the Pentagon-funded National Defense University, gave a bit of a primer on virtual worlds to an audience largely ignorant about what happens in these online spaces. Then he launched into a scenario, to demonstrate how a meatspace plot might be hidden by in-game chatter.

In it, two World of Warcraft players discuss a raid on the “White Keep” inside the “Stonetalon Mountains.” The major objective is to set off a “Dragon Fire spell” inside, and make off with “110 Gold and 234 Silver” in treasure. “No one will dance there for a hundred years after this spell is cast,” one player, “war_monger,” crows.

Except, in this case, the White Keep is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. “Dragon Fire” is an unconventional weapon. And “110 Gold and 234 Silver” tells the plotters how to align the game’s map with one of Washington, D.C.

First, nitpicks: raids in warcraft DO NOT FUCKING WORK THAT WAY. Seriously, God fucking dammit…

Ok, more importantly: as someone from Wowinsider points at:

This is a perfect example of security theater. It’s impossible to monitor every single medium that could allow terrorists to communicate, and communication is one of those things that they will find a way to do securely no matter what channels are monitored. Virtual worlds do not give terrorists any “value add” as a medium- the only difference between a virtual world and a chat room is the avatar and the game (if any).

Wired quotes:

“There’s been no public proof to date of terrorists hatching plots in virtual worlds. “- that’s because a virtual world is the same as a chat room, but you have an avatar that you can use to interact. Where’s the value add? /bless and /hug your suicide bombers?

“They worry that the massively multiplayer games make it incredibly easy to gather plotters from around the world”- Oh no! All over the world? You mean like email, TOR, or instant messaging do? Where’s the added risk because this is a virtual world?

“The accounts are pseudonymous. The access is global.”- the accounts are no more anonymous than any other internet communication medium… less so if you consider how fast Blizzard would divulge your personal financial information if the CIA started asking them questions about your account.

“The jargon is thick. And most of the spy agencies’ employees aren’t exactly level-70 shamans.”- if they’re worried that the “jargon” would allow them to communicate messages to eachother in a code, they’ve never bothered to read anything by Bruce Schneier. The “cryptotext” that is made to look like wow jargon would be more vulnerable to decryption by interested parties than the current industry standard encryption algorithms. Having codewords instead of a real encryption algorithm means you leave traces of your intent written all over the “codetext” for anyone who knows how to break them.

The only reason this presentation was given is that security theater needs constant new “threats” to keep people scared so that security professionals can continue making a living by “securing” them. Virtual worlds are the most recent technology to be used as the bogeyman, but they’re not the first and they won’t be the last.
I’m going to go cry in a corner now. I’ve got a raid at 8 tonight, and I have to break it to my guild that the government thinks we might be terrorists.

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Wrote this in response to an op/ed in today’s Observer bashing contraception. Lemme know what you think!

Daniel Patrick Moynihan once quipped that everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. In that vein, I respect Mrs. Kreager’s right to self-righteously believe that she is morally superior because of her decision to not use contraception. What I do not respect is the multitude of lies and misinformation she either willfully told or, more likely, unknowingly repeated.

First, the birth control pill does not have a myriad of medical problems. Like all medications, there are known potential side effects to taking the pill. The current literature on the subject is well summarized in an article from the Seminars in Reproductive Medicine’s December, 2001 issue (accessed via Medscape). The article, entitled “Risks of Oral Contraceptive Pills”, puts these risks into perspective. Many of the dangers, including breast cancer, either have negligible or small risk increases associated with the pill; around 1-2 per 100,000 women a year. In comparison, approximately 7.5 per 100,000 women die giving birth every year. The medical risks associated with the birth control pill are less than those associated with pregnancy.

The second egregious falsehood is her claim that many contraceptives are also abortifacients. Presumably, Mrs. Kreager is referring to Plan B, the brand name for the morning-after pill. It is a widespread misconception that Plan B works by preventing a fertilized embryo from implanting in the uterus. This is not true. Plan B works primarily through supplying high levels of the hormone progesterone. Progesterone occurs naturally in a woman’s body after ovulation to maintain the uterine lining in case the embryo is fertilized. It also suppresses Luteinizing Hormone (LH). This is important because a spike in LH is necessary for ovulation. Plan B works by preventing ovulation in the first place. While many have speculated that Plan B might prevent implantation of a fertilized embryo, there is zero clinical evidence that this occurs.

A third problematic assertion, this one simply misleading instead of false, is the claim that Natural Family Planning (NFP) is effective. Compared to just having unprotected sex whenever, NFP is indeed more effective. Compared to the pill and consistent condom use, its effectiveness is abysmal. The Guttmacher Institute tracks statistics about sexual and reproductive health, including annual failure rates in 2 categories: perfect use, and typical use (the failure rates assume an average amount of sexual intercourse over an entire year, and the chance of becoming pregnant at some point during the year). NFP’s perfect use failure rate is 5%, while the typical use failure rate is 25%. In comparison, the “withdrawal” method has failure rates of 4% and 18%. The pill’s failure rates are 0.3% and 8.7%, while condoms’ failure rates are 2% and 17%. Combining any of these methods together obviously dramatically decreases the failure rates. Not using a method at all has a failure rate of 85%.

On a less factual and more opinionated note, I want to very strongly disagree with Mrs. Kreager’s assertion that premarital sex is always loveless and hedonistic. I won’t defend the hedonists (as Futurama’s Hedonism Bot explains, they “apologize for nothing”), but most people engage in premarital sex with someone they care about. Maybe it’s a girlfriend/boyfriend, a fiance, or just a good friend, but they are not treated or viewed as an “object”. They’re a person you want to share love and pleasure with.

None of this should be taken to mean that I demand that people engage in premarital sex, or that I’m even encouraging it. What I am demanding is that people recognize the facts about reality. In closing, I want to share a few more numbers from Guttmacher. According to a different report of theirs from 2006, by the age of forty-four 99% of Americans will have had sex, and 95% will have had premarital sex. This number has changed little over the past few decades; 88% of Americans born between 1939 and 1948 have had premarital sex, while just 74% of “our” generation (born between 1979 and 1988, the youngest group available when this report was released) have done so. In terms of sexual practice, America hasn’t degraded morally; we’re just the same as we were 40 years ago.

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