{"id":83509,"date":"2015-11-16T14:30:40","date_gmt":"2015-11-16T12:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=83509"},"modified":"2015-11-17T11:51:18","modified_gmt":"2015-11-17T09:51:18","slug":"playstation-4-is-blamed-for-isis-attack-on-paris-and-everyone-ignores-the-larger-picture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/features\/83509-playstation-4-is-blamed-for-isis-attack-on-paris-and-everyone-ignores-the-larger-picture","title":{"rendered":"PlayStation 4 is blamed for ISIS communication: and everyone ignores the larger picture"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s forget that the cities of Beirut<\/a>, Lebanon<\/a> and Baghdad<\/a>, Iraq<\/a> recently suffered terrorist attacks of their own.<\/p>\n

Instead, we\u2019ll all focus on the PlayStation 4 and role it may \u2013 we\u2019re stressing \u201cmay\u201d here \u2013 have had in the attacks by ISIS on Paris. Because, you know, there aren\u2019t more important things we can be talking about.<\/p>\n

Forbes<\/a> has reported that, according to The Bulletin<\/a>, Belgian federal home affairs minister Jan Jambon pointed to Sony\u2019s PlayStation 4 as being responsible for communication between ISIS agents as it was notoriously difficult to monitor. \u201cPlayStation 4 is even more difficult to keep track of than WhatsApp,<\/em>\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 in poor taste as it may be to suggest, perhaps an ISIS agent was using it to stream Netflix.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s only really going to hurt our privacy as the gamer; it\u2019s certainly not going to affect ISIS.<\/p>\n

When a copy of GTA <\/em>is found in the home of a recent mass murderer, it\u2019s become common place to assume that the game is at fault, this in spite of the studies and empirical evidence that suggests otherwise \u2013 studies like this one<\/a> and this one<\/a>, and that\u2019s barely scratching the surface.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s freedom of expression.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

Need more to be concerned about? Apple\u2019s Chief Executive Tim Cook recently spoke out<\/a> against Britain\u2019s desire to have access to encrypted data sent between users, and even the authority to hand it over to authorities for analysis.<\/p>\n

The only way they\u2019d do so is to implement back door access to that data, so that they may access it at a moment\u2019s notice. Apple rightly argues that back doors put encrypted data at risk. \u201cIf you leave a back door in the software, there is no such thing as a back door for good guys only,<\/em>\u201d Cook said. \u201cIf there is a back door, anyone can come in the back door.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019ll just migrate to a new system of communication.<\/p>\n

And we\u2019re not talking you losing access to your library of games; we\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t prescribe to the idea that the console and its value added services are guilty until proven innocent.<\/p>\n

Our hearts and sincerest condolences go out to the families that have lost loved ones in the cities of Paris, Beirut and Baghdad.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

More columns to consider and flame us over<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Fallout 4\u2019s season pass to usher in new era of DLC abuse<\/a><\/p>\n

A look at the industry: today and tomorrow<\/a><\/p>\n

Why we love gaming so much<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An absence of evidence is not an evidence of absence, but that, in itself, is not reason enough to put our privacy at risk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":83511,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_enabled":true,"_sma_x_custom_text":"","_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[16375,16373,16367,16371,1239,1853,16369],"class_list":["post-83509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","tag-baghdad","tag-beirut","tag-isis","tag-paris","tag-playstation-4","tag-playstation4","tag-terrorist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83509"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83535,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83509\/revisions\/83535"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}