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The Serial Swatter

nytimes.com

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Re: The Serial Swatter

#51

Post by Zigurd »

dibujante wrote: post #34
DanBC wrote: post #5

> and from a police point of view, it’s better to ‘‘respond high and then downgrade’’ They're saying increased risk of killing innocent people = ok, which is a sub-optimal approach when you look at the thousand or so people shot and killed by US police each year.

Well, flip the response around - respond low and then upgrade. It's possible that this would lead to less death overall. But it would also mean that any situation requiring escalation would probably indicate such through the death of a police officer. Would you want to be the sacrificial officer who knocks on the door to find out if the situation is worth escalating? The overall numbers might work out better in that…

The US has unusually aggressive police, with tactics and doctrine that result in far too much shooting and killing compared to other advanced nations. Yet those other places don't get lots of dead police. Maybe there is a way to do this without "responding high?"

Re: The Serial Swatter

#52

Post by [deleted] »

cstross wrote: post #21
jgrahamc wrote: post #10

Many of the comments here about about the SWAT teams and militarization of the US police force, but the story I read is that this guy (and others) went after women gamers because of their gender. Just the other day a woman programmer told me of some of the threats and abuse she'd suffered essentially because she's a programmer, a woman and has a public profile. I find this so depressing.

I'm kind of startled that this type of crime isn't prosecuted as attempted murder. (If I go out and try to hire a hit-man to kill someone, that's how the prosecuting authorities would deal with me. If I try and trick someone else who is armed into killing someone for me? That's a very short step from paying an assassin -- there's just less money involved. That the armed someone in question is a SWAT team doesn't clea…

[deleted]

Re: The Serial Swatter

#53

Post by CaptSpify »

skybrian wrote: post #47

I'm wondering if a reliable caller ID that gives a rough geographical source of the call would prevent most swatting. A supposedly local emergency call that actually comes from a different country should be considered suspicious. Seems like there are some loopholes to be closed?

The problem, I think, is that there does need to be a way to "anonymously" report suspicious activity. Imagine a legit call, where the "callee" is known by the "suspicious person". I agree that there's room for improvement/checking, but not sure how to reconcile the two.

Re: The Serial Swatter

#54

Post by dragontamer »

jackgavigan wrote: post #38

> The F.B.I. doesn’t keep statistics on swatting incidents; a bureau spokeswoman says it is still working out which part of the F.B.I. should handle swatting investigations, because the crime ‘‘crosses so many of our delineated thresholds for who handles what.’’ This is pretty shocking. Speaks to an unreasonable level of bureaucracy and/or a lack of internal cooperation (not to mention common sense) at the FBI.

Cross-state crimes have always been a major issue for law enforcement.

You would think that the local SWAT team would investigate, except most SWAT teams are only county based. All of the calls for "small local government" come to bite us in the ass when a punk from California calls a SWAT team in Ohio. Lets presume a simple VPN setup here: California Punk buys VPN in Switzerland, creates a Google Voice Account for Ohio, makes a phone call to 911 through Google Voice in Ohio.

SWAT Team eventually realizes they've been tricked, but then they have no authority in the next county over... let alone California. They call the FBI and hand the case over to them... but now what? The phone call was probably anonymized and tracing the caller id leads to a fake Google Voice account that was accessed from Switzerland. All of a sudden you need to pull an international team in to deal with the issue.

Remember, each step of the way is a set of laws that we, the people, have wrapped the FBI with Red Tape in. What powers do the FBI have to trace phone calls? Was it legal for them to look at the IP traffic? Each of these steps are double-checked by lawyers in the FBI.

An FBI Agent who specializes in domestic phone calls (and what he is legally allowed to do in the investigation) suddenly finds himself looking at VOIP traffic from Google, and no longer understands the legal landscape his is operating in. So he has to pass the job onto another department.

Eventually, the FBI will build teams of people who understand the legal landscape across a typical SWAT attack, and have agents who can maneuver through the sea of red tape.

Considering how much "Hacker News" posts about "OFMG, GOVMENT SPY ON US" like every damn day, is it surprising to see the red tape that the political opinion has caused?

Re: The Serial Swatter

#55

Post by Ntrails »

DanBC wrote: post #44
Ntrails wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Announcing your gender is no [different ]than announcing that you're a student, that you're a teenager... But if the very definition of a "user" is around anonymity then by declaring a personal information you kind of are attempting to make the conversation about you (which I presume is contrary to the whole point of 4chan?). I honestly don't know whether 4chan would pass the acid test of "is declaring gender indeed…

> But if the very definition of a "user" is around anonymity then by declaring a personal information you kind of are attempting to make the conversation about you (which I presume is contrary to the whole point of 4chan?). we don't see the same level of hatred around people using tripcodes.

I don't understand - can you elaborate? Googling suggests that a tripcode is essentially marking posts as being from a consistent source rather than any change to the poster themselves being annonymous?

The question is if someone started posting on there about being tall - would there be vitriol? My guess is not but I really don't know.

Re: The Serial Swatter

#56

Post by vezzy-fnord »

dragontamer wrote: post #54
jackgavigan wrote: post #38

> The F.B.I. doesn’t keep statistics on swatting incidents; a bureau spokeswoman says it is still working out which part of the F.B.I. should handle swatting investigations, because the crime ‘‘crosses so many of our delineated thresholds for who handles what.’’ This is pretty shocking. Speaks to an unreasonable level of bureaucracy and/or a lack of internal cooperation (not to mention common sense) at the FBI.

Cross-state crimes have always been a major issue for law enforcement. You would think that the local SWAT team would investigate, except most SWAT teams are only county based. All of the calls for "small local government" come to bite us in the ass when a punk from California calls a SWAT team in Ohio. Lets presume a simple VPN setup here: California Punk buys VPN in Switzerland, creates a Google Voice Account for O…

Considering how much "Hacker News" posts about "OFMG, GOVMENT SPY ON US" like every damn day, is it surprising to see the red tape that the political opinion has caused?

Absolutely. This is all the fault of the anti-surveillance lobby, and nothing to do with the fact that separate political jurisdictions get to exercise their own autonomous decision making or anything stupid like that.

Re: The Serial Swatter

#57

Post by rhaps0dy »

cstross wrote: post #21
jgrahamc wrote: post #10

Many of the comments here about about the SWAT teams and militarization of the US police force, but the story I read is that this guy (and others) went after women gamers because of their gender. Just the other day a woman programmer told me of some of the threats and abuse she'd suffered essentially because she's a programmer, a woman and has a public profile. I find this so depressing.

I'm kind of startled that this type of crime isn't prosecuted as attempted murder. (If I go out and try to hire a hit-man to kill someone, that's how the prosecuting authorities would deal with me. If I try and trick someone else who is armed into killing someone for me? That's a very short step from paying an assassin -- there's just less money involved. That the armed someone in question is a SWAT team doesn't clea…

>QED: attempted murder

What?

Quod erat demonstrandum: attempted murder?

Thus it is proven: attempted murder?

You probably meant "Summarizing", "In summary", "All in all", or a similar expression.

Re: The Serial Swatter

#58

Post by cinquemb »

jMyles wrote: post #30
joshuaheard wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exigency is considered an exception to the 4th Amendment requirement of a warrant. So, for instance, someone calls in a hostage situation, or someone shooting with a gun.

My point is: if it's so easy to create fake exigency via a phone call, then we can't really consider a phone call, in the absence of any other evidence, sufficiently exigent to warrant such an exception.

In the age of metadata driven drone strikes on US citizens abroad enabled with redefinition of laws in secret courts with secret rules, a phone call seems sufficient.

Re: The Serial Swatter

#59

Post by rchaud »

cmdkeen wrote: post #29
cstross wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm kind of startled that this type of crime isn't prosecuted as attempted murder. (If I go out and try to hire a hit-man to kill someone, that's how the prosecuting authorities would deal with me. If I try and trick someone else who is armed into killing someone for me? That's a very short step from paying an assassin -- there's just less money involved. That the armed someone in question is a SWAT team doesn't clea…

The problem is that would involve the state conceding that SWAT teams don't exercise sufficient restraint in choosing when to utilise deadly force. It very much should be heavily prosecuted but that is why it can't be attempted murder. Much like why the police can't "shoot to disable" it's to do with the legal implications of what you are admitting.

Maybe not a murder charge, but in the US, there are a number of lesser charges that don't imply direct intent, such as negligent homicide, 3 degrees of manslaughter and others. In the case of deliberate targeting of women based on gender, it's possible to attach a hate crime charge as well, which would add significantly to the possible jail time. At the very least, pursuing some of these charges would build leverage, which may result in the defendant pleading to a lesser charge.

That in turn would result in no trial, and circumvent the complicated question of whether SWAT team operations disproportionately increase the risk of death or serious injury.

Re: The Serial Swatter

#60

Post by vinceguidry »

Kid's lucky, there are big dogs out there he could have angered. Parts where I used to live, you don't rely on the cops to solve your problems for you. I could have easily seen a truckful of guys driving up to Canada to beat the God back into him. Some guys are really protective of their daughters.
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