What happened after Sony pulled the plug on PlayStation Network, and before it finally alerted customers that their information had been compromised during an unlawful intrusion? According to SCEE head of communications Nick Caplin, writing in a post on the European PlayStation blog this morning, Sony's lackluster communication efforts were impeded because the company didn't immediately assume the worst. "There's a difference in timing between when we identified there was an intrusion and when we learned of consumers' data being compromised," Caplin says.

He goes on to explain that Sony learned of the "illegal intrusion" on April 19 and "subsequently shut the services down," though the official FAQ he links to in his post claims that Sony found the breach "between April 17 and 19." Furthermore, Caplin says that after shutting down PSN and Qriocity, "It was necessary to conduct several days of forensic analysis, and it took our experts until yesterday to understand the scope of the breach." There's your disparity.

The FAQ further notes that services will remain down until Sony can "verify smooth operation" of its network, though the company is "working hard to resume the services as soon as we can be reasonably assured security concerns are addressed." It also notes that folks looking for refunds may be out of luck for the moment, as Sony "will assess the correct course of action" regarding such requests when "full services are restored."

Beyond one US Senator politicizing Sony's info breach, the UK's Information Commissioner's Office also announced today that it would be questioning the company on the issue. "We are contacting Sony and will be making further enquiries to establish the precise nature of the incident before deciding what action, if any, needs to be taken by this office," the ICO said of its plans in a statement to Eurogamer.