The Director General of the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) claimed at the launch of the agencies annual report that video games were being used by crime bosses locked up in UK jails to communicate with their associates on the outside. This in turn caused a row with the head of the UK Prison service who claimed no such thing was happening.
A couple of comments immediately come to mind. Why if you know prisoners are using online games to communicate with their associates outside of prison would you alert them to the fact you know – they are doing that – when you could actually monitor this traffic and prevent crime.
Secondly, in response to this claim a prison service spokesperson said,
“Prisoners have never been allowed access to wireless enabled technology such as that used in some games consoles. Nor would they ever be allowed access to such technology. A decision was taken some years ago that the then-current generation of games consoles should be barred because the capability to send or receive radio signals is an integral part of the equipment.”
This is a little disturbing as it isn’t about wireless technology – its about connecting to the Internet. I can only hope this was a misunderstanding.
The overall impression though, is that neither side in this argument fully understand the technologies they are referring to. It does however seem that prisoners do.
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