Second Life on Terror Alert Plaid

Australia's News Corp. is reporting that there have been a string of terrorist attacks happening in Second Life, as well as training camps. They say that the terrorists are moving their training into the virtual world due to increased security and surveillance. Terrorist groups are training for real world attacks by using the SL. Not only are they training, but they are actually carrying out attacks on targets in SL in order to disrupt and destroy value both online and off. At least, that's what News Corp. is telling us.

I would be interested to know how much research has gone in to seeing if these are actually terrorist groups, of if it's just some 16 year old in Ohio. People that exist in virtual worlds solely to cause problems for other people are known as griefers, and have been around as long as virtual worlds have been. In real life, these people are called bullies. The thing is, now these griefers, or online bullies, have a larger array of tools at their disposal in order to cause problems. As the technology has advanced to allow people to do cooler things in virtual worlds, so has the technology for allowing jerks to be jerks. Now I don't know if these SL attacks are not more sinister, but just because a group calls themselves a terrorist group online doesn't mean they actually are.

I believe that we should all be relieved, though, as law enforcement officials have decided to handle this the best way they know how.

Intelligence and law enforcement agencies in the US and Australia are so
concerned they have established their own reality world games in a bid to gain
the same experiences as the virtual terrorists.

That's right, law enforcement is going to keep you safe by training in virtual worlds too. Boy, I feel better already. I don't think this is really the best way to help, though. If law enforcement really wanted to stop this from happening, they'd be calling up Justin Long to have him write some virus to crash SL and just stop this at the source.