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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.
We should ban all communication devices that terrorists might use, including pigeons
Either this information is false, or the Belgian minister is an idiot. If we can track them on a single platform, it would be dumb to let them know, because they will move somewhere else. It would also be dumb to tell them that it is hard for authorities to monitor if that was actually true. So I assume this is all false information disseminated as a deception.
With all the spying on its citizens, the governments are still clueless!
Actually, game-chat would probably be a good (for them) way to hide certain types of planning. I'm not saying it's true, but for a modern shooter or perhaps FPS, they could simply substitute "game" targets for real-life ones, and otherwise the conversation might sound much you would hear in some games.
OK, so sneak your infiltrator into the enemy Science Centre. There will be about 3 guards in positions X, Y, and Z. Group B will take them out, then you delivery the package by 14:00. Meanwhile group C enter the mass relay by 13:50, and take out all present. Group A will attempt to take out enemy power infrastructure and cause confusion at 13:30.
Maybe some of it would sound like weird BS, but would *you* suspect that some of the weird guys in CoD were actually plotting nefarious things in real life? Some of the shit that trolls said might be a good cover too, as most sane people either mute them or just ignore it. As a mid-level gamer I'm not sure I could tell the difference between a real-life nutball and the online nutball variety.
Terrorists have attacked again. Drop your freedoms and bend over.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
You're far more likely to die by slipping in your bathtub.
That's because your bathtub is designed by terrorists
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Why would any sane terrorist use any sort of service run by someone else? That just makes them vulnerable. Any sort of PC, install Linux and set up their own private XMPP server, instant fully-encrypted communications without leaving any logs or other traces on anyone else's systems where the authorities could get access to them. And with the authorities' current focus on social media it adds the additional layer of security of not being where anyone's looking for them to be. Geesh, I think government officials have been reading too many best-seller spy novels and listening to too few tech geeks.
among the last 9 stories only 1 is about terrorism. try new glasses maybe?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
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.
can we get 1 article not about terrorism? Something like 30 Americans have died from terrorism in the past 5 years. You're far more likely to die by slipping in your bathtub. The news coverage on terrorism is INSANELY blown out of proportion. I'd be fine not seeing another one for the rest of this decade.
At least this article has a technical angle, albeit a strange one. Throughout history entities have sought to keep their communications secret. At times obscurity was the order of the day, at other times cryptography was the method of choice, and sometimes a combination of the two are used.
Now that it's pointed out I'm not all that surprised that this kind of Internet-based medium would be used; it's specialized enough to be easily overlooked and given the nature of what's said on gaming systems during gameplay that there might not be much desire on the part of the operator of the proprietary system to monitor or even log communications. Of course, a downside, playing devil's advocate, is that if the operator of the system is logging, even if only to be able to address abuse after the fact, they might be able to comb through communications and uncover the participants, their IP addresses and possibly a degree of geolocation, plus any discussed plots including those that might not have been carried-out.
One of the things that kind of bothers me is that in this era of so much spying, including the very likely state of warrantless surveillance, that we've had high profile examples where that questionable system has failed. We had a fake expert on terrorism that lied about his credentials for many years. We've had cases of American domestic terrorism and mass-shootings that were publicized in advance by the shooters that were not uncovered or stopped. We've had cases of international terrorism in Western nations that were not uncovered. Clearly this spying is not only questionable in its legitimacy, but it's not even effective. Proponents can't claim that all of this spying on us, all of this expense and the chilling effects of known surveillance aren't even making us safer, so it's a net-negative.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
This makes complete sense. It's kind of a steganography, putting their data in where it can't be separated out easily or flagged because it blends in with the rest of it.
Have we found a way to tack yet another shooting on games. I'm impressed, I thought you couldn't steer this one towards the bad, evil games of murder, but leave it to our politicians to find a way.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't think "NOT PLAYING" is a valid option here. This is not two nuclear superpowers fighting each other, this is nuclear-capable countries fighting individual terrorists cells all over the place, hidden in the population.
Indeed. The French have perfected a method for reducing - or even totally avoiding - this risk.
According to the Australians, the Brits aren't far behind.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
We need to take any and all actions reasonable to ensure that those in power remain rightfully fearful of the governed masses.
Or you know, you could begin by not giving that much power to the government.
There's this small thing called "direct democracy" (= where it is the actual people who have the final say on everything. Not some representatives, but the general population). You should try it sometimes.
Oh, and please no dummy complaints that "it only works in very small territories". Come on. It's 2015. We're in the Internet Age.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]