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Teen behind hundreds of swatting attacks pleads guilty to federal charges

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Re: Teen behind hundreds of swatting attacks pleads guilty to federal charges

#51

Post by stavros »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #41

I'm unwisely and unadvisedly wading into this half-cocked. Swatting wouldn't even be a thing if - Anonymous calls should be treated with high levels of suspicion as to their legitimacy - First response training that's even moderately appropriate - Situational awareness beyond what one's been informed by third parties - Empathy for all humans - Any kind of notion of that a scenario may not actually be as described by…

It's a US cultural thing to either avoid blaming the police for anything, or make excuses for them. Brutal police behavior is seen as either acceptable, or what even desirable. I've seen reddit posts where a protester slightly taunts the police and gets pepper sprayed in the face, and all the commenters were gleefully saying things like "fuck around and find out", without even thinking that maybe there wasn't enough fucking around to warrant any finding out.

When you try and point this out, you're called various names, because apparently you either support the police 100%, or you're a criminal.

Re: Teen behind hundreds of swatting attacks pleads guilty to federal charges

#52

Post by stavros »

blindriver wrote: post #47
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #41

I'm unwisely and unadvisedly wading into this half-cocked. Swatting wouldn't even be a thing if - Anonymous calls should be treated with high levels of suspicion as to their legitimacy - First response training that's even moderately appropriate - Situational awareness beyond what one's been informed by third parties - Empathy for all humans - Any kind of notion of that a scenario may not actually be as described by…

No, because if every call isn’t treated like a real emergency, in the off chance that one of them actually is an emergency then everyone would be crucified by the media and lawyers. Look at all the school shootings as an example, or even the Trump assassination attempt.

Right, but when you smash down someone's door and see them playing games on a computer, instead of cooking meth while making bombs by tying guns together, maybe you shouldn't continue treating the situation as an emergency.

Re: Teen behind hundreds of swatting attacks pleads guilty to federal charges

#53

Post by bigiain »

tmpz22 wrote: post #46
Loughla wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot be convinced that swatting is something that used to happen. Is there a history of this? I legit do not remember seeing anything on the evening national news about that in the past, like from before 2000.

9/11 policy panic, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan producing surplus equipment, 400 million privately owned firearms in the US, US history of police standoffs, DoD investment in military PR including Navy Seals worship, and much more have ALL contributed to the Swatting phenomenon. I don’t think we could have intentionally created an incentive structure for swatting more if we had tried. And it’s going to continue b…

There's also the super weird (to people outside the US) insistence that the only possible response to gun violence (by gangsters, school kids, or cops) is "thoughts and prayers".

Re: Teen behind hundreds of swatting attacks pleads guilty to federal charges

#54

Post by stavros »

luckylion wrote: post #40
mcherm wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair question, but I would also like to ask "What the f** is wrong with cops?". Receiving an anonymous call claiming some not-particularly-plausible threat at a particular location probably DOES deserve a police investigation. I see no reason why it impels police to drag people from their house in chains, threaten to shoot them, or actually shoot them. If police responses were reasonable and proportionate to the plau…

What is the reasonable and proportionate response? "Swatting" isn't really a thing in Germany, but we've always had other disproportionate responses to single phone calls. One call (or even an email) that threatens to blow up the air port, or some particular air plane, and it's shut down for hours until they've looked in all the places you could hide a serious bomb (presumably, I have no idea what their "okay, I gues…

What happens in Germany when someone plausibly describes a situation that indicates someone is in extreme danger? Over here (in Greece), police officers will knock on your door, say they had a report and need to check, and then walk in and look around.

I've heard of reports of domestic violence, child molestation, things like that, and it's always the same. They rush to the place, knock on the door, look around, and arrest the people they need to arrest. What they don't do is start shooting.

Re: Teen behind hundreds of swatting attacks pleads guilty to federal charges

#55

Post by henry2023 »

swader999 wrote: post #27
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #9

Okay so like, genuinely not trying to do a "back in my day" fuckin thing here, but also: what the fuck is wrong with kids? Back when I was coming up, pranking at it's absolute worst was like, filling a dudes shoes with yogurt in the locker room, or like, putting plastic bugs in people's desks n shit. Why the fuck are teenagers trying to get each other murdered by cops!?

We would order pizzas to one person who complained about our skateboarding.

Not sure about your neighbors but if I get a random pizza delivery I would just pay for it and eat it. :)

Re: Teen behind hundreds of swatting attacks pleads guilty to federal charges

#57

Post by [deleted] »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #23
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #9

Okay so like, genuinely not trying to do a "back in my day" fuckin thing here, but also: what the fuck is wrong with kids? Back when I was coming up, pranking at it's absolute worst was like, filling a dudes shoes with yogurt in the locker room, or like, putting plastic bugs in people's desks n shit. Why the fuck are teenagers trying to get each other murdered by cops!?

To me it feels more like someone wanting control/power over others without being physically capable of bullying.

[deleted]

Re: Teen behind hundreds of swatting attacks pleads guilty to federal charges

#58

Post by BLKNSLVR »

blindriver wrote: post #47
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #41

I'm unwisely and unadvisedly wading into this half-cocked. Swatting wouldn't even be a thing if - Anonymous calls should be treated with high levels of suspicion as to their legitimacy - First response training that's even moderately appropriate - Situational awareness beyond what one's been informed by third parties - Empathy for all humans - Any kind of notion of that a scenario may not actually be as described by…

No, because if every call isn’t treated like a real emergency, in the off chance that one of them actually is an emergency then everyone would be crucified by the media and lawyers. Look at all the school shootings as an example, or even the Trump assassination attempt.

That doesn't cover all the things I'm (maybe poorly) attempting to suggest.

Treat calls that don't have the hallmarks of an emergency as "maybe not an emergency" - I admit that sounds simplistic and requires heavy training, however.

But my commentary was more about the gung-ho-ness of the follow-up. Don't houses have windows that aren't always blocked by drawn curtains? Don't binoulars exist and are relatively portable? Aren't there relatively quick and painless methods to adjudicate a situation prior to knocking impolitely? Even if time may be of the essence. One day maybe the heavy knock on the door is a trigger that blows up an entire Police / SWAT response team - then there might be some new policies around situatonal awareness instituted. (not that I would in any way promote such a grotesque act of violence).

The police are putting themselves in danger by their own behaviour.

Re: Trump assassination attempt, wouldn't that have been averted if someone just "went and had a look"?

Re: Teen behind hundreds of swatting attacks pleads guilty to federal charges

#59

Post by bigiain »

dmix wrote: post #33
plagiarist wrote: post #22

It should really not be possible for a single anonymous phone call to dispatch a heavily armed response team to break down someone's door. Aside from that, people who do so are despicable. 20 years is a light sentence. Taking money to put people in situations that could easily become deadly.

I'm sure a lot of consideration was put into how to deal with this problem. It's probably not cheap or easy running specialized SWAT teams for calls and there's nothing police would hate more than being taken advantage of by criminals. But they seem to have decided this is the least bad option. They have a duty to respond to serious phone calls about armed situations. The main issue is the insecurity of the old telec…

> The main issue is the insecurity of the old telecom system where spoofing is so easy.

I disagree.

The main issue is qualified immunity.

The phone companies never killed anybody in a SWAT raid. The phone companies never claimed to be building a "secure telecom system", nobody ever offered to pay for them to ensure high grade authentication and integrity checking of phone calls.

And the cops know that. And don't care. They are the people showing uo with military weapons to people's homes. It's their responsibility to know and understand the reliability of the information they're acting on, and the ease with which the phone system can be made to show them misleading information.

Cops with guns and police unions and qualified immunity who now they're never going to be held accountable for killing people based on false information are the problem, not the phone system.

Re: Teen behind hundreds of swatting attacks pleads guilty to federal charges

#60

Post by sowbug »

Palomides wrote: post #30
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #9

Okay so like, genuinely not trying to do a "back in my day" fuckin thing here, but also: what the fuck is wrong with kids? Back when I was coming up, pranking at it's absolute worst was like, filling a dudes shoes with yogurt in the locker room, or like, putting plastic bugs in people's desks n shit. Why the fuck are teenagers trying to get each other murdered by cops!?

swatting is older than I am, and kids have been calling in bomb threats to get out of school for the better part of a century

Pulling the fire alarm, too. Given how many times this happened at my high school, I'm sure that at least one person in the US has died because first responders were at a false alarm rather than available to help them.
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