Did you know that in the US, police can use Xbox 360 consoles – and Xbox Live – to trace and catch criminals? And that there are often law enforcement officers posing on the service undercover in an effort to catch child porn offenders?
A report on Ars Technica, using recently-leaked correspondence from a digital forensics mailing list, shows how authorities across the US can and do work with Microsoft to snag criminals with Xbox 360s both on and offline.
There’s examples of console hard drives being searched for incriminating video evidence, IP logs and billing information helping track down suspects and even Microsoft-supplied guidelines on how cops can build their own capture rigs with which to record gameplay and conversations with other users.
Fascinating stuff.
CSI: Xbox-how cops perform Xbox Live stakeouts and console searches [Ars Technica]
klanky
Wednesday, January 11, 2012 at 10:35 PMThey have been doing this with PS3′s for a few years now
Robbo2332
Wednesday, January 11, 2012 at 11:24 PMThey should have been doing this on Counter-Strike since 1999.
FitzBatman
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 2:37 AMTheyd better have warrants before searching anything. Entitled pricks.
Anon
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 2:43 AMSounds a lot like illegal wire tapping to me. If I was a US citizen I’d contemplate a class action lawsuit against Microsoft for invasion of privacy.
Awakening
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 4:10 AMLOL America has no right to privacy these days
Chazz
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 4:24 AMI guess for those crooks it’s…*puts on sunglasses*… game over.
YEEAAAAHH!
andy
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 12:07 PMWIN
DKnight1000
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 5:17 AMFunny the police couldn’t work out how to out put the voice through the speakers rather than the headset. It’s an option in the system settings, surely they looked there before going to what appeared to be great lengths.
I mean there’s a ton of people who do this stuff on youtube where they troll somebody over xbox live and you can hear both sides of the conversation so surely a special rig wasn’t needed.
Chazz
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 1:01 PMIt might have to be direct from the source as opposed to say recording from a pair of speakers for some obscure legal reason. :S
DKnight1000
Friday, January 13, 2012 at 1:08 AMThey mention in the article that the only way for sound to go is through the headset it can’t just come out the speakers.