The horrific terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday saw 129 people killed, well over 300 people injured, and 99 of those remain in a critical condition in hospital. France, and the world in general, is still coming to terms with what has happened, but the authorities are hard at work trying to piece together who specifically planned and carried out the attacks.
Islamic State (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for targeting these innocent people at locations termed as “soft” due to their lack of police/military protection. But how was it planned, how did the 8 gunmen (all of whom are now dead) get into France with weapons and suicide vests, and who were their accomplices?
It’s being suggested that the communication tool of choice was the PlayStation 4. While that may seem like a surprising choice, from a terrorist’s point of view it’s one of the safer options. The authorities have been able to monitor standard communication channels (land lines, cell phones, email, Internet browsing) easily for years, but the IP-based voice communication offered on the PS4 is much more difficult to listen in on, as is any peer-to-peer systems used.
Raids have already happened in Brussels, which is the suspected terrorist base of operations for these attacks. One PS4 has been seized so far, with Belgium’s federal home affairs minister Jan Jambon highlighting Sony’s console specifically as in “growing use by terror networks.”
The problem of monitoring communication on games consoles gets worse when you consider how many games have communication methods built-in. You can voice chat, message each other, or even write temporary messages on walls in a game like Call of Duty. How do you even begin to track such a wide variety of communications methods split across tens or even hundreds of different games?
Terrorists will always find some way of communicating with each other off the radar of the authorities, and typically using services that free and open societies enjoy. No level of monitoring can stop that. In order to stop these cowardly acts on innocent people, there is only one real solution: dismantle the terror networks using all options available from a united and free parts of the world.
Paris terrorists suspected of using PlayStation 4 to communicate | News | Geek.com
