US seeks to track criminals through consoles

15 April 2012
tinfoil hat guy

If you own a tinfoil hat and don’t own a Facebook account (well, NOBODY owns a Facebook account, MARK ZUCKERBERG OWNS YOUR ACCOUNT, AND YOU), I have some bad news for you – now you can’t play games either.

Forensics company Obscure Technologies has been contracted by the U.S. Navy and the Department of Homeland Security to do research into tracking data on home video game consoles.

This will allow the government to monitor network activity and extract configuration settings, flash memory dumps, your soul and disk images, which could assist investigators in gathering information on suspected criminals.

The main targets are the usual internet creepos; terrorists and pedophiles. These two groups of criminals apparently use game consoles to plan illegal activities or find victims.

In true American fashion, Obscure Technologies will only be testing its methods of data extraction on consoles purchased outside the US, because otherwise it would be kind of illegal due to “domestic privacy issues”. Foreign privacy issues are of course, irrelevant.

If the research results in practical application, it would enable the US to monitor game consoles in the same manner in which they currently monitor e-mail and all other online activity. Don’t bother deleting your search history, THEY ALREADY KNOW. Creep.

Source: Gamasutra
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