Belgian Home Affairs Minister: Terrorists Communicate Via PlayStation 4 (qz.com)

bricko writes with story at Quartz reporting the words of Belgium's home affairs minister Jan Jambon, who says that ISIL operators communicate using their PlayStation 4s; "which allows terrorists to communicate with each other and is difficult for the authorities to monitor. 'PlayStation 4 is even more difficult to keep track of than WhatsApp,' he said. The gaming console also was implicated in ISIL's plans back in June, when an Austrian teen was arrested for downloading bomb plans to his PS4." This seems a strange place to concentrate investigators' energies; terrrorists could be communicating in the chat session on the side of many social media games, too, or by any number of other means; Jambon would do well to read through some of the movie plotlines that Bruce Schneier has gathered.

Comments

Re:for the love of god

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to have forgotten that the Internet spans the entire world. And that many /. readers are not from the USA.

while I agree that the news coverage on the subject is often a bit excessive in some regards I strongly disagree with your apparent position that the 127 people who died in France yesterday and the hundreds of others who die every month elsewhere in the world don't matter because they are not American.

and FYI I am an American, I just have a broader world view than you have demonstrated.

Re:Either this is false or they are idiots

[geoskd]

Edward Snowden is a sainted genius for doing the EXACT SAME THING, only FAR, FAR more and worse.

Snowden is praised because he revealed the mass invasion of privacy against individuals who are not terrorists and have no affiliation with terrorists.

Mass surveillance is bad because sooner or later, the government becomes the terrorist, and the ultimate goal is to lay the groundwork in advance so that removing these tyrants is as bloodless and painless as possible. Mass surveillance, and the disarming of the populace are measures taken to make it easier for those in power to stay in power. We need to take any and all actions reasonable to ensure that those in power remain rightfully fearful of the governed masses. When they no longer fear the power of the people, the corruption begins. It doesn't take very long after that for the human rights abuses, and ultimately outright tyranny in its worst incarnations.