Sony’s PlayStation 4 has been found in terrorists’ bolthole.
A number of raids in Brussels, Belgium has unearthed evidence that included at least one PlayStation 4 console. French authorities believe that it could have been used by the terrorists to kill at least 127 people in Paris with more than 300 injured.
San Francisco City Hall lights up in red, white and blue
Belgian federal home affairs minister Jan Jambon has said that the PS4 is used by ISIS agents to communicate, and was selected due to the fact that it’s notoriously hard to monitor. “PlayStation 4 is even more difficult to keep track of than WhatsApp,” he said.
According to global reports, when the new generation of consoles launched, there were concerns that they would be too light on privacy, with peripherals like Microsoft MSFT – 1.92% Kinect and PlayStation’s Camera possibly having the ability to spy on users if say, the government wanted a window into the lives of everyday citizens.
While it remains unclear whether the Paris ISIS terrorists did employ PS4 to communicate, there are a few options, from sending messages through the PlayStation Network (PSN) online gaming service and voice-chatting to even communicating through a specific game. Documents leaked by Edward Snowden in 2013 revealed that the NSA and CIA actually embedded themselves in games like World of Warcraft to infiltrate virtual terrorist meet-ups.
With PlayStation 4, it seems likely that simple voice communication could have worked well. Global reports say it’s still difficult for investigators to monitor IP-based voice systems compared to say, a simple cellphone. In 2010, the FBI pushed for access to all manner of Internet communications, including gaming chat systems. The FCC did not grant the FBI access to peer-to-peer communications, but the government agency did build its own rigs to record their communications in pursuit of criminals in organized chats.