[HN Gopher] FBI finally tracks swatting incidents ___________________________________________________________________ FBI finally tracks swatting incidents Author : LinuxBender Score : 67 points Date : 2023-06-30 21:04 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (arstechnica.com) (TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com) | pengaru wrote: | Just wait til the psychopathic gamers often behind SWATTING learn | to automate the process with AI chat-bots running on carded VPSes | and VOIP services | Rustwerks wrote: | https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7z8be/torswats-computer-gen... | renewiltord wrote: | This will solve itself with whisper-based AI swatting. You won't | be able to tell who it was or where it came from and we'll get | authenticated phone calls at some point. | sneed_chucker wrote: | I know this is a stale take at this point, but seems like part of | the problem is the eagerness of US police agencies to respond | with full SWAT units on the basis of a single phone call | dmbche wrote: | I don't know the contents of the calls, but if the call is | talking about someone armed keeping someone in the house, or | someone barricading themselves, swat is the correct response. | | I think this is just a symptom of having so many weapons | around, getting calls about dangerous gun owners is routine and | resorting to swat is more "routine" than anywhere else. | biofunsf wrote: | Imagine a 911 operator gets a phone call that goes like this: | - 911, what is your emergency? - Help me oh god! ... My | husband he's going crazy he got a shotgun and is threatening to | shoot my kids he... - [garble garble] - [Distance | voice of the a man] "get the fuck off that phone" - | [Loud bang] - [Line clicks and goes silent] | | The 911 operator can try to call back to get confirmation, but | a lack of response just underscores the seriousness of the | situation. If the police didn't rush over in full SWAT gear, | ready to save the lives of children, they'd be the ones liable | for not taking a clear imminent threat to life seriously. | | Though I doubt fake swatting calls are so well produced. | | edit: In this situation, whether real or not, obviously the | police shouldn't murder people. If this was real, they should | first exhaust their non-lethal options for keeping the crazy | husband from murdering children. If it's a fake swatting call | or the wrong address, they should discover that and especially | not murder people. But in response to the parent's point about | the police being eager to rush over from a single phone call, | this seems like a 20 second phone call where they have no | ethical choice but to rush over. How they behave when they | arrive is a different topic from what I'm responding to. | tedunangst wrote: | Good news: police are not liable for doing nothing in | response to a threat. | MR4D wrote: | That thought isn't exactly comforting if you think about | it. | hackerlight wrote: | Uvalde shooting comes to mind. | BLKNSLVR wrote: | How long had the technology to see the calling number been | available? | | And can't law enforcement map that to a physical address | within a light speed equivalent amount of time? | | Unless a swatter is "the phone call came from inside the | house"-ing, it should have been easy to filter out for maybe, | conservatively, the last two decades. | wmf wrote: | The physical address is some VoIP gateway. What if you | legitimately use VoIP and call 911 for a good reason? They | can't just ignore your call. (Legally they can ignore your | call, but then why have 911.) | biofunsf wrote: | Exactly! I almost added that to my reply above. | | To make the above situation even trickier, let's say the | homeowners had a landline for years, but just recently | switched to a VoIP gateway. Their VoIP gateway operator | advertised a feature that their outgoing caller ID will | make it look like they're calling from their old number. | This is a real and desirable feature for lots of people. | I'd rather not have police disregard all calls from VoIP | gateways. | moralestapia wrote: | >ready to save the lives of children | | Lol, a wild meme appears. | pessimizer wrote: | They don't have to murder people with no physical | corroboration of the phone call at all. That's on them. What | if it were a legitimate anonymous phone call with a | transposition of the numbers of an address, or if the cops | just accidentally went down the wrong street? Should people | die then, or should we think that's a problem? | blacksmith_tb wrote: | The have only called 911 twice, once when a neighbor was | waving a pistol around yelling at his wife (cops came, de- | escalated things a little, then left - better than shooting | someone clearly, if not exactly perfect). The other time I | saw smoke pouring out from under the eaves of the house | across the street - in that case, the firefighters roared | up, jumped out, and busted in my front door (in spite of | the fact there wasn't any smoke or flames) so I clearly see | why people are worried about first responders charging in | without understanding the situation. | Arrath wrote: | I'm sorry but the mental image looking out your front | door as a firefighter kicks it down, an ignored building | happily in flames over their shoulder, is way too funny. | thakoppno wrote: | From a simple technical perspective, it seems like | something like a more targeted amber alert would be | feasible. | | Is this one of those fabled edge compute use cases? | cornstalks wrote: | Police don't just go in guns blazing with their eyes | closed. It's a very high-pressure situation because police | are running in fully expecting to get shot at. They don't | know if they're going to end up in a situation like [1] or | if this is just a prank. | | In the end it's a really crappy situation for everyone. | Police have to be super alert and are likely jumpy because | they expect to be shot dead if they aren't the first to | pull the trigger. | | Personally I don't really blame the police. Rather I blame | the phone industry for giving these callers way too much | anonymity. It should be trivial to trace a 911 call to a | real paying phone customer. That would make swatting a lot | less attractive (assuming it carried a very heavy | punishment too). | | [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ODn6wuuVsU | danenania wrote: | They should definitely still rush over in SWAT gear, but | before going in guns blazing, they should verify what the | situation is. They should assume the call may be fake until | it's proven real. More recon would probably reveal that | something doesn't add up in most of these situations. | dmbche wrote: | Since they recorded 1000 swatting events in a year, I | assume that most times swat is called their response is | warranted - it gets tough to try to vet calls sent to a | very fast response group | BLKNSLVR wrote: | Is SWAT really needed for that though? Is not "the police" | enough? | chongli wrote: | The phone calls that lead to a SWAT team response typically | involve a claim that a person has a gun and is holding their | partner hostage inside the house/apartment. Asking police to | not take such calls extremely seriously is not a solution. | | It's like asking the fire department not to show up every time | someone pulls a fire alarm in a building. Even if it's some | misbehaving kid who loves pulling the fire alarm, they still | have to show up because if they ignore it even once and it | happens to be a real fire then people will die. | dmonitor wrote: | the amount of property damage and risk of death that comes from | just a single phone call is honestly terrifying. | pessimizer wrote: | Cops don't kill people, phone calls kill people. | wahnfrieden wrote: | the police who enter homes and shoot, are each individual | humans carrying out the act | Supermancho wrote: | The alternative is a dystopian slippery slope. | | ie Please press 4 if you think they have a weapon. | rdlw wrote: | The current situation is literally the BOTTOM of a slippery | slope. | pessimizer wrote: | "Make an anonymous phone call if you would like the state | to murder someone!" | | Of course totalitarians want to solve it by making sure | no one can make an anonymous phone call. | dymk wrote: | Crazy opinion, but I don't think someone should be able | to call in an emergency where a SWAT team might show up, | without having that be tracked back to you. | | This isn't the state proactively keeping tabs on its | citizens, it's asking for traceability when somebody | initiates an action that might put lives at risk. | mike_hock wrote: | Report burglary in progress | | > Sign in with Google | | > Sign in with Facebook | | > Create an account | jtriangle wrote: | Create account is a 40 item form with unknown input | validation. | | Oauth to google is broken. | | Facebook requires full posting permissions. | | Welcome to hell. | NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: | When SWAT was first instituted, the idea was that it would | only be used for high-stakes situations. The Grubulanese | Liberation Army has taken 33 hostages at the First Asshole | Bank, and are threatening to kill one every 10 minutes until | their demands are met. | | Now SWAT teams are used to serve warrants in residential | neighborhoods. | krustyburger wrote: | The funny thing is even in that sort of hostage scenario, | they're much better off sending Jack Slater in instead of a | SWAT team. | Sohcahtoa82 wrote: | It's a DANGEROUS take. | | The alternative is that police come into a scenario potentially | unequipped to handle an actual violent situation. | | I think the real solution is that SWAT teams need to be | especially trained on the fact that swatting is a thing, and to | try to recognize when they're in a swatting incident. | slotrans wrote: | > The alternative is that police come into a scenario | potentially unequipped to handle an actual violent situation. | | Police are now trained to treat EVERY situation as | potentially violent, no matter how innocuous or factually | safe. They assume everyone they interact with is a lethal | threat. | | > I think the real solution is that SWAT teams need to be | especially trained on the fact that swatting is a thing, and | to try to recognize when they're in a swatting incident. | | That would require humility, which police don't have, because | again they are trained to immediately escalate and use | violence to control every situation. | helpfulclippy wrote: | Your take is also dangerous. Sending a load of militarized | cops to breach someone's home with the intent to use lethal | force at an instant based only on an anonymous phone call | empowers bad guys to create extremely dangerous situations | for chosen targets on demand, and this is now common | knowledge. You can't train your way around that. | throw_m239339 wrote: | This is why Swatting is a crime that should severely punished, | like attempted murder or harsher. I know it's not going to | solve how the police handles interventions like these, and | people lost their lives as the result of these actions but it's | clearly people trying to murder others via cops... these aren't | pranks. | | But yeah, we need to rethink certain police protocols as | well... | NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: | I think this misses the point entirely. | | If the police can be used to commit a crime akin to murder, | maybe it's not the criminal we should be worried about so | much as the police. | throw_m239339 wrote: | > I think this misses the point entirely. | | No it doesn't miss any point entirey. | | I said | | > But yeah, we need to rethink certain police protocols as | well... | ttyprintk wrote: | I think the article misses that point. Somewhere toward the | middle, more mental health professionals to understand the | swatter. No thanks, not on my dime. Send the mental health | professionals to the swatted house where they can relaxedly | see nothing is wrong. | hackerlight wrote: | If someone hires a hitman to pull the trigger, that someone | is an integral part of the chain of causality leading to | the murder, and that should be criminal. | jimt1234 wrote: | Old: The police are gonna take my weapons! | | New: The police are my weapon! ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-06-30 23:00 UTC)