The Sun’s sensational cover story claims to have blown the lid on how terrorist cells are using online gaming as a means to communicate with each other without being detected.
Disclaimer: this story is reproduced from the source, the Sun, and in no way represents the position of Bettor.com.
Let us get one thing out of the way before going any further, I personally find this story hard to believe and seeing the source, makes me doubt its legitimacy even more and I only write this to share this bit of news with our readers and to show them
just how the media sensationalise everything.
This is not biased journalism but we do not want our loyal readers to think we agree with the story.
With that rather elaborate disclaimer out of the way it is now time to jump into the details of the story that the Sun broke.
According to them, “Islamic extremists know cops monitor phone calls, emails and online message. So they are turning to PlayStation and Xbox games to keep their deadly plans secret.”
Apart from the use of ‘deadly plans secret’, which makes one wonder whether the article was written by an eight-year-old, the rest of the statement does seem plausible.
That is if you can imagine a group of extremist terrorists sitting in a gaming cafe or at home with a copy of Call of Duty and a blue-tooth headset, making plans to bomb major cities around the world.
There is a bit of possibility to that, however, the terrorist group would have to be rather well funded to afford a video game console, head set, a game and a TV for a large number of their ‘operatives’.
However, what makes one question how the Sun stumbled onto and discovered this ‘news’ makes it even more questionable. If the extremist groups were using Modern Warfare 3 to plan their attacks then why would they do it on the public servers.
They could have a private match where all 12-18 players could be their own, or even play a game of Spec Ops, where no outsider could interfere or eavesdrop on their master plans, but then again how could the Sun know about it if that was the case.
As if that was not enough, the Sun also claims that apart from communication, the extremists were using games to train themselves.
“There has been evidence would-be jihadists treat war games as training tools, a bit like a pilot might use a flight simulator.”
It seems the publication forgot to mention the difference between holding a controller and an actual weapon. By the same logic, one could learn how to be a Pro-Street driver by playing Burnout Paradise.
One more thing that burns a major hole in the legitimacy of the story is a headline that reads, “Kids’ fave keeps their plots secret.”
To which one has to point out that kids cannot play the game since it has an age restriction against anyone who is under 18 years of age.
It’s a wonder how the Sun can take themselves seriously after running this piece of sensationalism as their cover story and only points out their ignorance and lack of professionalism and integrity.
Here is an interesting fact though, Modern Warfare 3 earned $775-million in its first five days following release and is the best-selling video game of all time. The Sun just wrote a sensationalised article on that very game meaning that anyone and everyone
who has something to do with gaming is sure to pick up a copy.
However, if the story does turn out to be true then we may just see terrorist strafing and jumping on the battlefield and calling the odd care package from time to time or maybe hide under cover for a few seconds to recover their health after being riddled
with bullets.
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