This piece is one man’s opinion and does not represent the opinions of MyGaming in general. That said, you’re more than welcome to hate, love, flame or grunt (some people grunt) at it.
Let’s for a moment forget that while the world bathes itself in blue, white and red, a community united under Paris, France, it seemingly turns a blind eye to the rest of the colour spectrum, as the red, white and green of Lebanon and red, white, green and black of Iraq go unseen and unnoticed.
Let’s forget that the cities of Beirut, Lebanon and Baghdad, Iraq recently suffered terrorist attacks of their own.
Instead, we’ll all focus on the PlayStation 4 and role it may – we’re stressing “may” here – have had in the attacks by ISIS on Paris. Because, you know, there aren’t more important things we can be talking about.
Forbes has reported that, according to The Bulletin, Belgian federal home affairs minister Jan Jambon pointed to Sony’s PlayStation 4 as being responsible for communication between ISIS agents as it was notoriously difficult to monitor. “PlayStation 4 is even more difficult to keep track of than WhatsApp,” he said.
How do we know the PS4, or rather its communication functionality, is to blame? You can sense the sarcasm, right? After the attacks on Paris, reports Forbes, a number of raids were undertaken in nearby Brussels and at least one PlayStation 4 console was found – in poor taste as it may be to suggest, perhaps an ISIS agent was using it to stream Netflix.
Our point is that apparently proximity (otherwise known as circumstantial evidence) is enough for authorities to throw around accusations. And, granted, frustration, fear and anger are likely to bias their opinions, but it’s only really going to hurt our privacy as the gamer; it’s certainly not going to affect ISIS.
When a copy of GTA is found in the home of a recent mass murderer, it’s become common place to assume that the game is at fault, this in spite of the studies and empirical evidence that suggests otherwise – studies like this one and this one, and that’s barely scratching the surface.
Instead of looking at factors like poverty, lacking education and poor parenting, naysayers pegged gaming and used it as foundation for policies that seek to restrict and undermine our freedom of choice as well as a video game developer’s freedom of expression.
So how long do you think it will take before lobbies of likeminded people petition and lobby for supervision of what we share over networks like PSN?
Need more to be concerned about? Apple’s Chief Executive Tim Cook recently spoke out against Britain’s desire to have access to encrypted data sent between users, and even the authority to hand it over to authorities for analysis.
The only way they’d do so is to implement back door access to that data, so that they may access it at a moment’s notice. Apple rightly argues that back doors put encrypted data at risk. “If you leave a back door in the software, there is no such thing as a back door for good guys only,” Cook said. “If there is a back door, anyone can come in the back door.”
That very same concern is completely relevant here too. So if you thought your data on PSN was vulnerable now, can you imagine how vulnerable it will be when back doors are implemented on the behalf of anti-terrorist agendas. By the way, the moment those process are put in place, if terrorists even are using PSN to communicate, they’ll just migrate to a new system of communication.
And we’re not talking you losing access to your library of games; we’re talking credit card access and a lot more besides. And more than that, looking at the bigger picture at hand, this is a symptom of a greater overall loss of privacy.
While we agree that an absence of evidence of the use of the PS4 as a communication device does not equate to an absence of activity, we don’t prescribe to the idea that the console and its value added services are guilty until proven innocent.
Our hearts and sincerest condolences go out to the families that have lost loved ones in the cities of Paris, Beirut and Baghdad.
More columns to consider and flame us over
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I think that it’s a legitimate concern for intelligence agencies that platforms like the PS4 or MMOs for that matter are used for terrorist communication.
How intel is gathered from these platforms is their problem, so don’t worry or rant about the fact that the PS4 was mentioned. No one blames it for the shooting and no one will look at you funny for owning one….