Government Spies Target Gamers

Gamers who enjoy taking on the virtual role of spies and secret agents in computer games, beware - one of the government's leading intelligence agencies has you in its sights.

GCHQ, the Government Communications Headquarters, will embed job adverts within the online multi-player versions of many adrenaline-fuelled espionage games such as Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent and Rainbow Six Vegas, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, and the high-octane racing game Need for Speed: Carbon.

The recruitment posters for the intelligence organisation will start to appear later this month on billboards and hoardings throughout the virtual environments of these games. The agency hopes to attract web-savvy applicants for high-tech roles at GCHQ, which works closely with the Foreign Secretary, MI5 and MI6 to provide signals intelligence (digital "eavesdropping"), and to protect government information systems from hackers.

"This is all part and parcel of our wider recruitment campaign," said a GCHQ spokesperson. "We employ people with a wide range of skills, and one of the most important areas is the IT and technical side. This advertising campaign will appeal to an audience that has those kind of hobbies and interests."

"The world of online gaming offers GCHQ a further route to target a captive audience," said Kate Clemens, head of GCHQ's digital strategy at TMP Worldwide, the intelligence service's rectruitment advertising advisers. "These gamers are loyal and frequent users of PC and console games and are particularly receptive to innovative forms of advertising."

It's also an important part of plans to make the work of intelligence agencies less secretive and hidden. GCHQ has been holding open recruitment days for some time, and even MI6 has lifted the lid on its work, advertising for recruits on the side of London buses.

The ad, which runs with the strapline "Careers in British Intelligence", appears as a poster in scenes in real-time online games.

GCHQ has a two pronged remit, covering signals intelligence and information assurance.
Signals intelligence provides information to support the government in areas such as national security, military operations and law enforcement.

Information assurance helps keep Government communication and IT systems safe from hackers and other threats.

GCHQ employs about 5,000 people at its high-tech headquarters in Cheltenham, western England.

Britain's shadowy intelligence services have slowly been raising their profile — and deflating some cherished secret-agent myths — as they attempt to attract a larger and more diverse pool of recruits.

The foreign intelligence service MI6 launched a Web site in 2005, which cautions that its work is far from the "level of glamour and excitement" of James Bond films.

Its domestic counterpart, MI5, has an online section tackling "myths and misconceptions" that stresses "we do not kill people or arrange their assassination."

GCHQ's recruitment campaign is running via the Microsoft-owned, in-game advertising firm Massive network of games, with the tag-line "Careers in British Intelligence"... no comment really.