Even when it means breaking the law, there are few places the FBI won’t go these days to check if you’re up to no good. Your car, your computer and your local mosque are all fair game. Now they’re adding to that list the final frontier of virtual weirdness, that often deplorable but ultimately fascinating hub of virtual culture and deviancy known as Second Life.Don’t get too paranoid, though. Big Brother probably isn’t coming after you or the 3-foot long erect phallus affixed to your avatar, unless you’re involved in organized crime. Because apparently organized crime is a thing in Second Life, enough for the FBI to make mention of the online virtual world in a recently published dossier (PDF) on gang threat assessment:Second Life is a computer-based virtual world with a simulated environment where users inhabit and interact via avatars, or graphical rep- resentations the virtual world may depict a real world or a fantasy world. Users communicate through text-chat and real-time voice-based chat. Second Life provides versatility and ano- nymity and allows for covert communications. Because of its anonymity and versatility, gang members could potentially use second life to recruit, spread propaganda, commit other crimes such as drug trafficking, and receive training for real-world criminal operations.This won’t be the Bureau’s first time inside the online Metaverse. Back in 2009, they set up recruitment stations of their own throughout Second Life‘s virtual environs. Although who knows if that was a legit effort or just a way of trolling any drug cartels that happened to be holding their business meetings inside virtual sex dungeons in Second Life’s seedier districts.More likely, those drug cartels are communicating over plain old email, as a recent statement from the leaderless hacker philosophy club Anonymous suggests. Members of the group previously claimed that they had intercepted, and intend on publishing, around 25,000 emails belonging to one of Mexico’s most notorious cartels, Los Zetas. Barrett Brown, one of the hacktivist group’s most visible and outspoken members, went as far as to threaten the cartel directly, demanding that they release a fellow Anonymous member who had allegedly been kidnapped by the cartel. “Give us back our Anonymous participant,” he tweeted, “or many of you die within a week.”This would normally be an easy win if Anonymous were up against any other type of organization. But one security firm is now saying that the cartel, unlike the comparatively docile FBI, may be too dangerous a monster to poke in the eye. According to the report, the Zetas likely have their own fearsome arsenal of security experts at their disposal, creating a high likelihood of “abduction, injury and death” for any hackers found responsible.Anonymous or no, the Zetas and other Mexican cartels are notorious for vicious attacks on the journalists and bloggers who try to expose them. Dozens of bodies have been found along the Mexican border in recent months, including one woman who was found in September with a handwritten message indicating that she had posted on a social networking site. Naturally, this is leaving rifts of doubt among Anonymous members regarding their ability to challenge the cartel without winding up as decapitated heads riding atop tortoises in the New Mexico desert.Will the loose-knit cabal of e-vigilantes lose face if they back down? Even if it’s all just a bluff, the group’s challenge seems far gutsier a challenge to the drug trade than whatever the FBI is planning to do to find criminals amongst the fur-suited sexual deviants of Second Life. Good luck with that, guys.
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