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Drugs Blizzard helps cops track down a World of Warcraft player, who's a suspected drug dealer.

Rastanarchar-
ismarx

Avatar: Rastanarcharismarx's Avatar
21

[Vacation Hideaway]

Level 35 Troll

“Problem Child IV”

Dunatis Posted:

Go Blizzard!

Personally I think people whine way too much about privacy issues when the potential to help so many is there. If it takes the police knowing about my perverted porn collection and nerdy lifestyle to catch pedophiles, killers and other criminals, then so be it. I’ll suck it up and deal with the occasional inconvenience.

If they are keeping track of perfectly mundane activities of ordinary citizens then they are doing it wrong and wasting resources on top of it that could be used tracking down REAL criminals. If companies go out and give away info to third parties (including law enforcement) that they are not obliged to give legally (though warrants) they are exposing personal information away without your consent or knowledge. Exposing personal information also involves some risks and can bring some people a great sense of insecurity. And it is also up to Judges or magistrates to decide whether there is sufficient proof for further investigation (that might require a search warrant).

I think that countries like the UK (UK scores way worse than most western nation, including the USA, when it comes to privacy; mainly because of the abundance of camera’s and keyloggers on the public and workspace) show that keeping track of people and putting camera’s all over the place hardly helps preventing criminality and even though it has in some cases made a difference in identifying criminals, they are pretty worthless considering that police actually being physically present is way more efficient and considering camera’s are quite a nuisance and also give the possibility for abuse of power.

As for the internet: there is so much going on here that it is highly questionable whether it is useful to go and keep track of ordinary citizens as I’ve stated earlier and I srsly doubt the cops are busy going around in WoW patrolling or something. If though this was the case I believe the US law enforcement srsly has to get straight their priorities (which they actually gotta do anyways); Where I live the Federal Computer Crime Unit actually rather goes searching predator networks (arresting many pedo’s in one go) and shutting down pedo-websites rather than catching individual predators after actually luring them one-at-a-time; or occupying themselves with small time hackers and downloaders.

Sergeant Cid Posted:

I’m not sure a warrant would even be necessary. It’s like a hotel. You may be renting a room there, but the hotel owner can grant permission for the police to search any room, even without a warrant. I think I read somewhere about a case that was ruled like that, if I find it I’ll repost.

true, that’s why I simply say it is might rather uncalled for than a srs breach of privacy. And the police probably did this after receiving a complaint anyways. Anyways if this guys is actually a dealer, the idiot should have checked the EULA to see whether Blizzard co-operates with the cops.

Dirty Birdy

Avatar: Rocker Chick
11

[Forumwarz Speakeasy]

Level 20 Camwhore

Interstate Salsa Trafficker

so hold up he was in canada dealing in indiana or was he on the run and went to canada and still was using the same wow acc i mean really if i was wanted by the cops i would just say **** it and start over

NeoVid

Avatar: 174653 Fri May 22 01:54:45 -0400 2009
13

[WeChall]

Level 63 Troll

“Flame Retarded”

This really doesn’t seem like a bad thing to me.

Though this might just be because I end up comparing it to things like Yahoo giving the IPs of political dissidents to the Chinese government.

duca

Avatar: 127754 2012-12-21 23:37:31 -0500
14

[And The Banned Pla-
yed On
]

Level 38 Camwhore

Happiness cannot be bought, but Crispers can.

Reading the article it doesn’t seem too out there or an invasion of privacy. There was a warrant out for the individuals arrest, the police gathered information. They discovered that he played WOW and since he had skipped town they needed a way to locate him. So they sent a subpeona and Blizzard provided the information. Just seems like Blizzard was trying to help the cops catch a wanted criminal. *shruggs*

It’s not like the cops were trolling WoW going ‘OMG THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT DRUGS’ seems like the equivalent of them going ‘hey this guy likes to hang out at biker bars so let’s check out some biker bars to see if he’s there’

Spearman

Avatar: Red Green Flashing

Level 18 Troll

“Li'l Hellraiser”

Protip: dont play WoW if your a drug dealer

duca Posted:

Reading the article it doesn’t seem too out there or an invasion of privacy. There was a warrant out for the individuals arrest, the police gathered information. They discovered that he played WOW and since he had skipped town they needed a way to locate him. So they sent a subpeona and Blizzard provided the information. Just seems like Blizzard was trying to help the cops catch a wanted criminal. *shruggs*

It’s not like the cops were trolling WoW going ‘OMG THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT DRUGS’ seems like the equivalent of them going ‘hey this guy likes to hang out at biker bars so let’s check out some biker bars to see if he’s there’

Even more so like he frequents a particular bar so they went there, asked around and got lucky with an owner that would cooperate.

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