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Welcome to Spycraft, a podcast that
tells gripping life and death spy stories and

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the amazing devices and operations that made
them possible. Now, let's get started

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online gaming and espionage. US is
Air National Guardsman Jack to Share. This

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is a story from spy Scape found
friends. Unlike many gen Z gamers during

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COVID nineteen, he had a girlfriend
known as Crow, a young woman he

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never met. Person to Share also
traded memes and war videos with virtual friends

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on the Discord platform, and,
if prosecutors are right, leaked hundreds of

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US secrets to impress an unlikely group
of military strategists. Chronically online team means

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living at home with mom. The
Massachusetts Airmen was not the first game or

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accused of selling secrets online, not
for money or ideology, but to sell

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disputes scored bragging rights. To Share
guilty in six counts involving Wilford retention and

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transmission of national defense information. But
he's not the only gamer again. Since

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twenty twenty one, military intel has
been posted three times in the war Thunder

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Gamers forum. Technical specs of British
and French tanks and intel about Chinese DTC

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ten twenty five tank amo all apparently
are genuine. The Discord leaks may be

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in a class of their own.
However, some describe them as one of

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the biggest government leaks in the US
history, more than three hundred pages of

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highly classified intel from Pentagon assessments of
the Russia Ukraine War two, Iran's nuclear

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program. But with only four reported
leaks and billions of gamers, can this

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situation be really so bad? Well, according to the CIA officer, they

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don't consider gamers to be eclipsing spies. There is some merit though to addressing

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and considering this issue. An academic
from Foreign Policy article in gaming said his

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central arguments that the traditional acronym intelligence
officers used to recruit recruit spies, which

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is known as mice money, ideology, compromise, and ego. It's a

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fifth addition to the described the durable, deep social ties experience by people heavily

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involved in an online community. It's
not really about video games, says Jonathan

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Esconis. It's about the way the
Internet is rewiring human sociality in ways of

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current contraspionage practices do not know how
to deal with. And this all started

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something to say by the whistleblower Edward
snowed In an intriguing stead of cyberspies who

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play online games for a living.
After World War Two, the US,

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Britain, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand struck a five eyes deal to share

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signals intelligence SIGGEN, second sig I, n T sigent is, the satellites

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and computer SIGAN and computer networks become
more common. They're listening post transformers to

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digital collection centers that hovered up foreign
military intel and diplomatic secrets. By two

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thousand, the NSA and Britain's g
HQ were also spying on tens of millions

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of online gamers games as when NSA
analysts wrote enthusiastically or opportunity. During the

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so called War on Terror, sand
experts zoned in on millions of World of

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Warcraft players, sucking up country and
time zoned data, local IPI addresses,

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and realm server addressers as well.
According to classified documents by whistle lower Edward

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Snowden, the online world wasn't the
den of iniquity spies imagine, however,

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terrorists. It seems we're more focused
on the real world, and the snowed

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In leaks led to media questions about
privacy. This skepticism is well found,

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establishing direct connections between acts of virtual
vandalism and actual terrorism. While it isn't

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clear, what isn't clear as post
snowding is whether Five Eyes spies are still

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targeting gamers. Perhaps the skies is
under cover orcs. We're looking in the

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shadows of chat forums, But are
they really gamer is really a security threat?

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Well, it depends. Gaming online
is complex, So it depends online

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gaming is surgeon worldwide. With world
revenue were expected to reach twenty eight billion.

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ZO means intelligence agency won't just want
to recruit gamers and located intelligence leaks,

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they also want to focus on preventing
those leaks in the first place.

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The biggest takeaway is that government needs
to revisit its clearance process and stopped handling

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out top secret access like it is
candy