[HN Gopher] FBI finally tracks swatting incidents
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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!
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(page generated 2023-06-30 23:00 UTC)