War Games in War Games?

We talked in class about war games recently, but I read an article that put a little different spin on "war games" that I hadn't really given much thought about.  The article is here if you care to read it, but I'll just give a brief summary of what its about to those that don't want to read it.  The article talks about how the U.S. Navy is recruiting video game hackers to start a project in which the hackers will go into video game systems in order to find potential terrorists or the transmission of top secret information.

Courtesy of The Mod Shop

The thought of this intrigued me in more than ways than one.  It first made wonder what kind of hacker would want to send his or her list of hacks that they have done or been able to achieve to the federal government.  The thought of telling the very entity that you are most likely breaking the rules/laws of usually isn't in the best interest of the applicant.  I wonder if there is some kind of amnesty or anonymity concept that would be employed in order to actually be worth the time of someone who is more qualified for the task, even if how they got to be that talented isn't necessarily "by the book." The second thing that came to mind was that this might seem like a breach of privacy, but then I thought about it a little more.  If there are people already capable of doing this on their own through practice on systems that you and I use already, then its not that big of a jump to have some of them working for the government in a productive way that can also be regulated or at least better controlled.  I know the whole idea of Big Brother looking over your shoulder makes a lot of people cringe, but when you are already susceptible to having your information tracked by people that aren't associated with the government, why not at least get some benefit from it?

But back to the games.  The way that these hackers work to get inside systems to either retrieve data, change data, or corrupt files is nothing new to anyone with some knowledge of the technology in today's world.  The fact that the Navy thinks that they could potentially track down terrorists through the video game systems that everyone plays has a touch of genius to it.  Many video games, especially first person shooters are used as a supplement to military training by armed forces around the world.  It's not far fetched to think that terrorists could be using the games that we love to play to actually train soldiers on how to act in war.  I know that our own military uses games like Call of Duty and Battlefield as a way to help hone the skills of soldiers in a cheap and effective way.  The online features of these systems could also easily be used to transfer information either through a typed out message, or a through audio messages, or even during game play.  It seems like it would be very difficult to track and find possible terrorists just because of the sheer immensity of what this would entail and whether or not once something is found if it can even be used to execute a search warrant or the like.  I still think its possible, I just have my doubts about the plausibility of it.

I thought this was a interesting way that games can be used in real life to possibly save lives and that this could potentially be a way to locate terrorists that are hard to find and might overlook something as simple as a gamer tag.  I'd be interested to hear what everyone else thinks about this.