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Canadian Teen Arrested For Calling In 30+ Swattings, Bomb Threats
tsu doh nimh (609154) writes "A 16-year-old male from Ottawa, Canada has been arrested for allegedly making at least 30 fraudulent calls — including bomb threats and 'swattings' — to emergency services across North America over the past few months. Canadian media isn't identifying the youth because of laws that prevent the disclosure, but the alleged perpetrator was outed in a dox on Pastebin that was picked up by journalist Brian Krebs, who was twice the recipient of attempted swat raids at the hand of this kid. From the story: 'I told this user privately that targeting an investigative reporter maybe wasn't the brightest idea, and that he was likely to wind up in jail soon. But @ProbablyOnion was on a roll: That same day, he hung out his for-hire sign on Twitter, with the following message: "want someone swatted? Tweet me their name, address and I'll make it happen."'"
good
... the fact that you can do this with a telephone is pretty scary.
Just recently I saw a massive police overreaction (closing off a block of downtown DC in front of a university hospital, complete with police abusing citizens) just because some student left her backpack lying around. If this is all it takes to provoke this sort of reaction, and if a few phone calls can get someone "swatted", then why the hell does al-Qaeda bother with bombings and flying planes into things? Send over a few sleeper cells with nondescript bags and boxes and watch the panic fly.
This is pretty damn analogous to an allergic reaction: "ack, a piece of peanut antigen! FETCH ALL THE CYTOKINES, BOYS, THIS MEANS WAR!"
It's good that he's been caught, but it's ridiculous how the police will overreact to everything and use a ridiculous amount of force when it's simply not necessary. That does not bode well for us.
At the risk of being modded into the ground, how is this Slashdot material?
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
The reason you are only aware of those instances (and of course implying those are the first instances) is because you are a partisan hack.
FYI swatting has been used significantly longer that your partisan views ascribe. I a guy that someone tried to swat (the community didn't have a swat) in 1994 via modem redial on a BBS. Why don't you try climbing out of your partisan cave? There is nothing more disgusting than anyone trying to claim (or imply in this case) that persecution makes them right or virtuous in their cause.
I think you've conclusively proven that this Canadian kid advertising his services to random people on Twitter is an American liberal. Great detective work. Now if only the world was limited to just what you personally know.
Sucks to be his parents.
Nothing like getting sued by someone whose been swatted.
But that's what they're going to get for raising a little asshole.
It certainly dates back to the 1960's, when faking bomb threats from peaceful protesters was used to bring in police and National Guard against them. The Scientologists made an art form of it. Mary Sue Hubbard, L. Ron's wife was convicted for her involvement in "dead agenting" Paulette Cooper, which included faked bomb threats against the Israeli embassy, in order to discredit Paulette's book called "The Scandal of Scientology". And who can forget "The Maine", whose faked fraudulently advertised bomb destruction in 1898 was a vital trigger of the Spanish-American War?
Discrediting your opponents by making fraudulent bomb threats is an old, old political hobby.
That's only because you didn't live in New York City, where false fire alarms and sending police to someone else's house for a "domestic" call were considered entertainment in certain quarters back in the day. Admittedly, they were less likely to show up with military weapons then.
On one hand, glad the little fucker got caught. on the other, also glad he was Canadian. Had he been in the US, he'd probably get a life sentence.
16 year old kids do really incredibly dumb anti social stuff, problems arise with something as easy to pull off as this -- and the supposed anonymity of the internet. How many of you remember winnuke (circa 1996)? Nowadays nuking someone would have been met with a knock on the door, and being hauled away in cuffs.
(NOT defending swatting. more criticizing penalties for teenagers in the US. At 16 you're a moron -- you have some inkling of the consequences but you don't really *get* it.)
I guess that explains the SWAT team that busted down the door of a house just a 100m up the street from me on the weekend --> West End of Ottawa, quiet, no crime neighbourhood. And no need for the battering ram they used, other than a little poetic justice perhaps.
Putting someone's life needlessly in danger is funny to you? Fuck off.
Don't forget World War 2, when the Nazis made up claims about anarchists with explosives in order to justify their abuses.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Generally people don't call in swattings from their home phones.
You can thank the end of modem use for that, before it was not unknown... I had the police come out to a hotel once because my modem dialed 911, my wife and I and to talk to them for quite a while before they were convinced all was OK.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Putting someone's life needlessly in danger is funny to you? Fuck off.
Depends on the person, right? You know you agree -- you're thinking right now that I deserve it, aren't you?
Mel Brooks: You, having a heart attack, is comedy; me, stubbing my toe, is tragedy.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
WWII?, the same thing happened during the french revolution when the Monarchy blamed anarchist for any number of actions their own soldiers commited. This isn't a game of trying to find the first incident, it's probably been happening since og claimed ug shat on the food so he could steal his new cool invention the wheel.
All 16 year olds are liberal and brighter than you ever were.
Sure. He can't possibly understand what his 'fun' is causing. He should be tortured at gitmo for a few years to see if he knows anything about those anonymous terrists then a bullet in the back of the head when he doesn't know it is coming.
Oh you thought we were talking the first? When the above person already mentioned the 1898 Spanish-American War?
The first victim of war has always been truth. Hell, the crap in the Ukraine isn't even a war yet and truth is already dead and buried.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This kid should rot in jail for a while, then receive a lifetime ban from emergency services.
Seriously, WTF, kiddo?
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
You should stop at 29 swattings and fake bomb threats.
Seriously, how did he not get caught earlier?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
They will react to each threat and there will still be Boston marathon bombings probably with increasing frequency due to the psychological stress the society is under caused by an over reacting immune system. Worst of both worlds.
Haw Haw
I have seen this time & time again dealing with script kiddies that have hacked or tried hacking our systems. When you confront them, they laugh and think they will never get caught, usually followed by insults about my mother. Then you meet them in court and they cry in front of the judge at how they thought it was just a game and not real, etc etc. The judge takes pity and slaps them on the wrist with community service.
Except for one time, the judge must have gotten a computer virus recently, because she tried him as an adult and he got maximums for everything. This was in 2002, so he will be in prison another 12 years before he can get parole.
It certainly dates back to the 1960's, ...
For the 1960's, the Gulf of Tonkin comes to mind. However, more on topic, you may be specifically interested in the LAPD's tactics of the 1930's and 40's.
The Cuban government promoted that conspiracy theory, but there's no evidence for it at all. It was most likely an accident, which happened pretty often in the late 19th century, before modern safety standards. Tensions with Spain were already so high, and war was already imminent. "it was cited by some hawks already inclined to go to war with Spain"
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You gotta be one of those Quebecquois douchbags.
bombing. The response to this was to have about 3-4 thousand police soldiers(DEA, FBI, staties, and local) show up and shut down about 3 cities here in Massachusetts for a day. I've heard the cost of the shut down was on the order of 300-400 million dollars. Should I point out this was to stop 2 idiots(with little training) with a couple of pressure cooker bombs, some pipe bombs, and a pistol. Wonder what that cost, maybe a thousand dollars? (Geez, if Al-Qaeda wants to hurt us by warfare on the cheap that response given to how much it must of cost would be absolutely no deterrent.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
It in theory is supposed to work like that. Maybe what they were sold was supposed to work like that. What is is the 911 of the area code of your phone has to forward your call to the 911 service of the area you say you are in. They do this manually and the backend numbers can change and you can get dropped and it might take a while for the other 911 to pick up if it is still correct. 911 is a joke in (not) your town.
Go figure that this guy would make impaired decisions while being mentally impaired.
In the end, it's still stupid people that make up the largest body of drug users, and no amount of pretending that "normal" people use drugs will change that fact.
Why is the the young the demographic for the army, not the 30-year olds?
Because your body, reflexes, hearing and vision are physically as close to perfect as they're going to get when you're 16-20, and starting in your late 20s it's all (at first very slowly) inevitably downhill?
The USS Maine actually blew up, and as far as I know there was no threat preceding it.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
You can't mention the (alleged) kiddy diddling domestic terrorist without mentioning his nuisance lawsuits. Much detail available at Hogewash.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
One roll per "SWAT" call, results to be cumulative:
On a "1" he gets shot in the arm
On a "2" he gets shot in the leg
On a "3" he gets beat-up and tossed into a squad car for a few hours
On a "4" he gets a stripsearch, a cavity search, a delousing and a county jail "roomie" for a few nights
On a "5" he gets a round in the face
On a "6" he gets the crap scared out of him (literally... threaten him till he soils) by an over-militarized police unit
On "7" through "12" he gets his life threatened by armed men, and spends a sleepless night talking with investigators, trying to "prove" he's not guilty of something gets the contents of his home overturned and sifted through and has to explain all this to, and comfort, his terrified family members who many never again feel safe in their own home.
That's the sort of risk he subjected every family member to in every home he pulled this "prank" on. At 16, you are plenty old enough to know better. Kids at age 16 used to be able to hold jobs, and in some places even marry. 16 year olds fought in both the American Revolution and in the American Civil War and have fought in many other wars in human history. This kid is a dirtbag playing with the lives of innocent people and he would likely have continued to do it up until people died (and almost certainly even beyond that point) and if somebody does not put him down soon he probably WILL become a rapist, a murderer or a child abuser (SOME form of bastard that gets his kicks destroying people's lives).
As for the authorities... that's a whole other (and serious) problem. We've had a rash of recent episodes where the police who are supposed to "protect and serve" and who gun control activists tell us are the only ones who should be "trusted with guns" have gone NUTSO and blasted away like Yosemite Sam. The recent episode in Florida where 23 officers unloaded 350+ rounds into two unarmed men, the Los Angeles pickup truck barrage, The infamous NYC "shootout" with an unarmed man, The Arizona vet shooting, etc are all examples of this poor training, poor discipline, and just appallingly bad judgement. There is simply NO excuse for authorities to bash their way into a home in response to such a 911 call... SOME effort out to be made with things like cameras and pocket periscopes to see what's happening inside before lives are put very much at risk.
Pay phones are often in public areas, which often have CCTV. While it's not quite a direct trace to the home phone, it's almost certainly enough to find out who did it. All you have to do is follow the CCTV footage at the time of the call until you get a shot of their face, or an idea of where they commuted from. You'll also get a description of their build, ethnicity, etc. and then there's likely eye-witnesses for the areas you can't see.
Surely a much better/modern approach is to use some VOIP provider over a VPN. The call quality might not be brilliant but it doesn't have to be. Or perhaps steal someone's wi-fi. There's lots of ways.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
it's all makeup. There's no real Al Quaida - it means database when translated . it's just a big ploy to crack down on your liberties, and they would welcome any actual real terrorist harassment as it would cause more panic.
Seems to me the all seeing surveilance society for all the information it collects can't get the job done. Why did it take more than 2 calls to track down and locate this kid?
Another standard 1 line fart reply from gmhowell.
There should be some way they can detect a spoofed callerID at the least. Some way of sending a tone
to that phone number or even Calling that phone number expecting a busy signal.
Granted some phones have multple lines and whatnot, but that should be something that can be
tech'd out.
I'd have more sympathy for this kid if he had targeted politicians and other members of the police state with this. Who am I kidding. Our great leaders wouldn't reign in this rabid dog. It would create a no-swat list for VIPs.
Don't forget World War 2, when the Nazis made up claims about anarchists with explosives in order to justify their abuses.
Or like now, when the US government uses the threat of terrorism to spy on it's own citizens, curtail their rights, increase it's military and intelligence budgets and roll it's armies around the world. It's the oldest trick in the book, and it still works.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
I got away with every illegal thing I did at 16! More then this idiot, more than the then/than troll.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The invasion of Poland was in fact justified by staging a "Polish invasion" of Germany, so you could actually argue that such deception started the whole war in the first place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
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Deserving and doing are two separate things.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
If it was a serious violent crime it might be considered. For something like this I doubt it (at least in Canada). However if during one of those 30+ incidences someone what actually hurt or killed, then that would probably be the argument used. As it is, scary as it is for the victims, and a waste of taxpayer money (I imagine that each of these responses cost money), being tried as an adult is probably an overreaction. However, considering this wasn't just a few instances, if convicted, the kid is likely going to face the maximum of whatever he is eligible to get.
I know my office had a bomb threat last year, likely by someone that was ticked off with us. The funny part was that our emergency procedure was to exit and regroup in a neighboring mall. Which we found out later from the police was where the actual bomb threat was called in from (payphone)! Disclosure of that sort of information might have been useful rather than after the fact. I mean anyone that knows our emergency procedures (which we practice from time to time, so it isn't exactly a secret when hundreds of people are milling about), would do that exact same thing, but plant the bomb in the mall. Anyway as it is, most people that do this are just trying to be a pain in the ass and disruptive, much like the little punk that was part of this story.
Protip: the French Revolution was over 100 years before the 1898 Maine incident.
I'll raise the ante by citing Rome's actions against Carthage (especially in the lead up to the Third Punic War).
That's over two thousand years ago.
Your move.
Justin's brother, maybe? Fits the mold.