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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

#41

Post by BLKNSLVR »

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 a single anonymous voice

A very (un)funny irony is that there are numerous stories I've read about domestic violence victims being arrested, as opposed to the attacker, which implies there's some level of suspicion in some circumstances about the information the police are being fed. Swatting, as a thing, indicates there's some kind of hero-pressure build-up that overrules any kind of whereby that pressure has the possibility of impending release.

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

#42

Post by RajT88 »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #5

I'd be interested to know if any actual SWAT operations happened from these calls. I know that it does happen sometimes.

I don't think there are any numbers published about the % of swatting calls result in a visit from a SWAT team, but I would wager it's higher than you are imagining. The police would be foolish to advertise the efficacy of swatting, so of course the real numbers are not out there AFAICT.

It feels like between this and the prevalence of scam calls, the FCC has been asleep at the wheel for 20 years. There's some signs of the "sleeping dragon" waking up, but I fear all that will get walked back under the next administration.

Bonus good read on the topic:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2024/02/why-arent-police-doi...

"Love of the game", Jesus Christ.

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

#43

Post by bigiain »

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.

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

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

#45

Post by ghssds »

shiroiushi wrote: post #37
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!?

I guess my friends were weird, but our idea of doing a teenage prank with phone calls was to use our two phone lines (we had 2nd phone lines for our modems) to set up conference calls between each other, and then each of us would call a pizza shop (I might call Domino's, and he'd call Papa John's), and then mute ourselves and laugh while the pizza shop workers would argue about who called who. The smart ones would im…

*67 could have enabled your shenanigan for years.

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

#46

Post by tmpz22 »

Loughla wrote: post #14
burnished wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect its more about how much national information you're exposed to today than any sort of time based moral failing.

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 because guess what was one of the major issues in this election? Domestic security!

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

#47

Post by blindriver »

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.

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

#48

Post by BLKNSLVR »

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…

Those two things should not exist in combination.

One must not result in, or be able to cause, the other.

Let's say we have to deal with the fact that they do co-exist and interact. Maybe there should be additional protection and safeguards, and if there are some (which there probably are), don't stop there until the percentage of illegitimate calls is below a certain threshold.

And maybe it is already below a certain threshold, and I'm getting all hot under the collar about an incredibly rare scenario. Maybe it's better than it was. 20-year sentences should go part-way to reducing the frequency.

I'm mostly on the side of "letting a guilty person walk free is better than imprisoning (or arresting or shooting to death or even just violating the freedoms of) an innocent person".

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

#49

Post by bigiain »

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…

I'm pretty sure that the US is unique in it's propensity for SWAT teams to shoot first ask questions later.

Same way as the US is the only nation in the world where it's impossible to prevent weekly school mass shootings.

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

#50

Post by blindriver »

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!?

It’s not all kids, it’s one particularly sociopathic kid and the fact that he suffered no accountability until now.
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