And one indication we have about something being very wrong in this situation comes, from all places, the game chat of Sean Smith in the hours before his death. As every news article and obiturary has noted, Sean was an avid player of EVE Online. EVE is an intricate game of strategy and deceit whose developer once said with a twinkle in his eye at a conference I attended at New York Law School on virtual worlds and games, "We make fraud fun."
EVE Online is intensively demanding and difficult and a notorious time-suck and even cult. And interestingly, it's the only online game or world where a players' council that interacts in a form of democracy with the game developers has actually worked successfully. Sean Smith, known as "Vile Rat" in the game and also playing the role of a diplomat for his Goonswarm alliance, was on that council. He also attended the Fanfest or gamers' convention for EVE -- that shows he was even more heavily involved in this intensive community than the typically obsessed player.
My first question -- one asked only by a few other people on various forums, and always only by women -- is why Sean Smith was playing EVE online or at least chatting to EVE buddies at work -- even if not during work hours -- and chatting about security matters.
You cannot possibly know who is in those games as the avatars are all anonymous. And speaking of Anonymous, many of them got their start on the Something Awful forums where Sean was a moderator.
People are loathe to ask these questions in the shock of the news of our fallen heroes, and I totally understand that, but it is a question that inspectors have to ask. The FBI must get his game chat transcripts from EVE or from Jabber or Skype as they are matters of national security.
What stood out chillingly for me are the last words of Sean on September 11, 2012 as recorded by his EVE buddy The Mittani, which he and his fellow EVE mates seem only to evaluate on the level of a marker for being in a dangerous situation:
(12:54:09 PM) vile_rat: assuming we don't die tonight. We saw one of our 'police' that guard the compound taking pictures
Read the full article, this always stood out to me from so many years ago.
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[–] 23609360? 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
Letting people on the outside know what's about to happen without violating OPSEC. Same as Q. I wonder where he got that idea from?