The Daily Mail, The Mirror, and The Telegraph have claimed that Sony’s PlayStation 4 is being made use of by ISIS/ISIL/Daesh to prepare its attacks, with The Express even saying that a PS4 was used to outline the current horrifying strikes on Paris.
There’s No Solid Evidence of These Claims
While it is to be expected of the Daily Mail to make this kind of preposterous statement, the sourcing and reporting for these tales are very scarce. The majority of it is based on remarks from Belgium’s replacement head of state, Jan Jambon, which came from an argument on ISIS’s usage of the PS4 as a communication platform. PlayStation 4 are harder to track than WhatsApp, according to Jambon, which led him to believe terrorists could be using the PS4 to enforce jihad.
PS4 Party Chat Has Been Under Suspicion
Jambon is most likely referring to the PS4’s Party Chat function, which permits players to trade voice as well as content messages one-to-one or in a team, and is indeed encrypted. Nonetheless, there’s no evidence that the feature is, in fact, being made for terrorists, not to mention that it played an indispensable component in the Paris strikes.
The Point is, Encryption is Everywhere
The truth is, the actual articles to support these claims are quite lackluster. In light of the recent terrorist attacks around the world, media outlets are surely looking for ways to increase traffic to their websites and instill fear and panic among the people, which can always result in profit.
Terrorist groups have been utilizing file encryption for decades, even before Edward Snowden became the world’s biggest whistleblower, and whether or not they used the PS4 to communicate isn’t what’s important – what’s important is focusing on reducing the panic and terror that they instill in the people, and attack these groups at the source.
