'Extremist' Gamers Beware: FBI and DHS Are Coming For You
During a time when things are rather rough for people, you would think the United States government would have a pretty clear rubric of issues to address.
And while the government may pay lip service to hot-button issues like inflation and immigration, the actual actions it takes suggest that America’s elected officials have wildly divergent priorities.
Case in point, despite all of these real-life maladies afflicting Americans, the Government Accountability Office put out a report in January (which was not made publicly available until Feb. 28) suggesting that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security need to hone their sights on… video games?
Yes. Instead of taking a hearty stab at, oh, I don’t know, the crime epidemic sweeping through America’s most populous cities, the government instead appears focused on rooting out “domestic violent extremists” that exist in the video game and social media spheres.
“Domestic violent extremists use social media and gaming platforms for several purposes, including to reach wide audiences; to insert their extremist ideas into the mainstream; and to radicalize, recruit, and mobilize others, according to government reports and experts GAO spoke with,” the report states.
The report would continue: “According to social media and gaming companies GAO met with, they use various content moderation tools to identify and remove content they determine violates their platforms’ policies related to domestic violent extremism on their platforms.”
That, in and of itself, is hardly newsworthy.
Yes, if some idiot violates a video game’s terms of service by using racial slurs, companies have every right to remove and report said individual. It’s their game, after all.
But the GAO report essentially argues that that level of accountability isn’t enough.
No, the video game industry needs Big Daddy Government.
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have mechanisms to share and receive domestic violent extremism threat related information with social media and gaming companies,” the report states. “However, neither agency has developed a strategy that articulates how it identifies and selects companies to engage with or the goals and desired outcomes of those engagements.”
According to the GAO, that missive boils down to two key recommendations.
- “The Director of the FBI should develop a strategy and goals for sharing information related to domestic violent extremism with social media and gaming companies.”
- “The Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis should develop a strategy and goals for sharing information related to domestic violent extremism with social media and gaming companies.”
But while the GAO may recommend that the FBI and the DHS, of which Intelligence and Analysis falls under, improve their snooping on Americans, that hardly means it’s not already happening.
Despite lauding “GAO’s positive recognition of DHS’s mechanisms for sharing and receiving threat-related information,” the DHS agreed that more nosiness was needed when it concurred with the two above recommendations.
Even if you were to assume that the DHS and FBI had nothing but the cleanest intentions (a mighty large assumption) while tracking down these “extremist” gamers, has either organization demonstrated much to engender your trust lately?
Or ever?
Even if you were to grant that the government would never abuse this power, there’s never been a period in time where more government oversight made life any better for anyone.
This whole charade just reminds this writer of one of former President Ronald Reagan’s most memorable quips: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”
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