South Africa Claims World's First PS3 Jailbreak Arrest

[Andy Chalk]

South Africa Claims World's First PS3 Jailbreak Arrest

Police in South Africa have conducted what they say is the world's first raid on a PlayStation 3 jailbreaking operation.

Following a complaint from the South African Federation Against Copyright Theft, the Commercial Crime Unit of the South African Police Service conducted the world's first PlayStation 3 anti-jailbreaking raid. "Jailbreaking," as noted by eGamer [http://egamer.co.za/2011/08/breaking-worlds-first-playstation-3-raid-takes-place-in-johannesburg/], is the act of bypassing security measures on game consoles and other hardware, typically in order to facilitate the playing of pirated videogames.

The police seized "various state-of-the-art computers, circumvention software packages, jailbreak USB devices, PS3 consoles and hard drives," according to a press release, with a total value of roughly R100,000 [$14,000]. Also found were counterfeit PlayStation 2 games and original PS3 titles which were apparently being used to generate counterfeit copies.

Despite the SWAT-sounding nature of the raid and the big haul of hardware and software, only one person was actually arrested. "One suspect, a foreign national, has been arrested and he will remain in custody until he appears in court at the Specialised Commercial Crimes Court in the next couple of days," said Jacques Botha, the CCU's director of finance and special operations. "It is the first PS3 circumvention arrest in the world."

I'm not sure if that's actually true, or how a raid on a jailbreaking operation differs from one on a counterfeiting/piracy scheme, but even if it's not the first in the world it will, according to Botha, be the first of many such raids that will be carried out across the country.

Source: ITF Gaming [http://www.itfgaming.com/news/first-ever-ps3-jailbreak-raid-and-arrest-south-africa]


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[Baresark]

Haha, strange way to combat your practically non-existent economic growth. Hoping for more subsidization I see. Imagine all the things they could be combating, but I guess "jailbreaking" operation will have to do. They aren't any good at anything else I suppose.

 

[Covarr]

Making counterfeit games? Nonono, this is not merely a jailbreaking raid, but one on run of the mill bootlegging, something that's gotten people arrested many times before. Sorry, South Africa police, you fail at research.

P.S. Thanks

 

[Bluntknife]

As a former South African citizen (now Canadian) this makes me sad.

The amount of rapes, murders, thefts, high jackings...etc

This is what they allocate resources to?

Lets just say I'm extremely happy to be out of that country.

 

[ChillShark]

Look at he name of the CCU's director of finance. Now if more like him were in charge of the murder and rape cases, they would also be solved faster and perhaps also become headlines. It is funny to me how people view South Africa. "Boo for apartheid, the white man this and that", etc.... But why doesn't anyone see the obvious? Since SA's so called "democracy" has begun, crime, disease, and all other manners of corruption and filth has increased indefinitely.

Sure, this jailbreak "raid" seems like a waste of resources and so on, but if one delves deeper into this, you will see that Mr. Botha probably did this with very little help from governmental authorities and other supposed resources (resources that gets squandered by the managing officials).