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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

#81

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's also observably not a thing. Castle Rock is a rather famous scotus case where the cops failed to do squat about a guy with a restraining order kidnapping his kids despite a law specifically saying that they shall act on said restraining orders and there was no allowable section 1983 claim against the cops just failing to act.

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

#82

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…

And yet choosing to weaponize that against innocent people is as bad as those other illogical things.

Yes, the police response in this country is often absurd. Using that to harass and harm people is equally awful.

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

#83
post #69
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm pretty sure there are a number of people in the US who don't support the police in any way at all. There was a whole song a few years ago called Fuck the police, I'm pretty sure. It's like sweeping categorizations of an entire country are usually not accurate or something.

That song was released in 1988 by NWA, a hip hop group from Compton, California.

I don’t think it’s too far fetched to think that song was colored by their experiences with the notoriously corrupt LAPD of the 1980s.

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

#85
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well he is facing 20 years

That's a pretty light sentence for 375 murder attempts and threats.

Not to mention the opportunity cost: victims of real violent/urgent situations who couldn't access timely protection, as well as the cost to society of perpetrators who marginally escaped while law enforcement were occupied tending to fake call outs.

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

#86
post #43

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.

It wouldn't be a problem, if the "heavily armed response team" was properly held to account when they killed innocent people. Cops kill people on the basis of ludicrous anonymous phone call because they know they'll get away with it when it turns out to be false. And they like it that way. There needs to be a few very public cases of entire SWAT teams getting 20 year sentences. ACAB

> It wouldn't be a problem, if the "heavily armed response team" was properly held to account when they killed innocent people.

You’re right, but it is a problem and people who choose to abuse that fact deserve to have the book thrown at them.

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

#87

It looks like the 20 years is a theoretical maximum. Isn't it pretty rare for anyone to ever get the maximum sentence?

Yes. He's being sentenced as a juvenile, which will further complicate (and likely mitigate) his sentence.

If I had to guess, he'll do a couple years.

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

#88
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

#89
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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This is a mischaracterization of what actually happens in the us. Using sensationalism doesn't help, instead let's focus on the actual numbers and be constructive on how to decrease them.

In 2023 it's estimated police killed around 1,248 people. Notice I said killed vs Murdered as words matter. Out of that only 104 were unarmed. Now without looking at each case or example here, you can still account for the mass majority of police interactions ending in a death, the civilian was armed at a minimum.

Using the data provided we could say easily that 1,248 people is way too many. Hell, 1 is too many. That doesn't change reality though, if 1,248 deaths were related to individuals engaging in crime, this is a causality that you can lay solely on the civilian victim, as they chose to engage in this action.

We can argue how many were crimes, that's fair and i'm happy to throw out and say let's assume 25% were not crimes and really were just an escalated interaction. The bureau of justice statistics gave numbers for 2022 that estimated that 49.2 million people or 19% of the US had an interaction with the police. If that's true, napkin math would put the police murders at .0025% of the interactions, and assuming 333,287,557 million people in 2022 (census bureau) places it at .00037% of the population died by the hands of police.

Some related statistic. Roughly 500 people die from falling out of bed or off furniture, 300-400 die from drowning in a bath tub, 4,000 die from choking on food, 150 die from coconuts falling on their head, 500-600 die from falling from a ladder.

Looking at the numbers, it's very hard to say that police "Regularly murder people".

As for the "Everyone having guns" that's a separate debate, but I would posit you're correct with regard to criminals performing criminal acts, that are armed, increase the likelihood of a negative out come. Federal arrests for weapons offenses were around 8,000 with states being at close to 12,000. Putting that at 20,000 or so arrests per year. Even with those numbers if you're arrested with a firearm, you're still at around 6% chance of death. Again given the circumstances and propensity for needless escalation, these numbers while bad aren't crazy.

There are multiple problems in the US. We need better training and funding for police departments, we do need to weed out the bad cops (as with any field), but with all that the most common denominator is criminal behavior.

All of that said, If you've got data points or information that may be counter to the above, i'd be very curious to see it. I'm very much open to having my mind changed on the topic and encourage you to post it up for all of us here.

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

#90
post #59
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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