U.S. Project Reynard Mines Data Looking for Virtual Spies
Reynard, a data-mining project from Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), is an exploratory effort to monitor activity in virtual worlds and online games and then model what terrorist activity in those worlds would look like. The Director of National Intelligence recently released a Congressionally mandated report on various data-mining projects of which Reynard is just one. While it's just an early effort right now, "If it shows early promise, this small seedling effort may increase its scope to a full project."
Data-mining is defined as "a program involving pattern-based queries, searches or other analyses of 1 or more electronic databases" in order to "discover or locate a predictive pattern of anomaly indicative of terrorist or criminal activity...." and will now be ongoing "in a public virtual world environment. The research will use publicly available data and begin with observational studies to establish baseline behaviors."
No word on what world that will be in, but we already know that the CIA has a presence in Second Life and that IARPA has investigated Linden Lab's world as well.
The full description:
Reynard is a seedling effort to study the emerging phenomenon of social (particularly terrorist) dynamic in virtual worlds and large-scale online games and their implications for the intelligence community.
* The cultural and behavioral norms of virtual worlds and gaming are generally unstudied. Therefore, Reynard will seek to identify the emerging social, behavioral and cultural norms in virtual worlds and gaming environments. The project would then apply the lessons learned to determine the feasibility of automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world.
Worry not, though. The government understands that "applications of results from these research projects may ultimately have implications for privacy and civil liberties," so "IARPA is also investing in projects that develop privacy protecting technologies."
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