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Online "Swatting" Becomes a Hazard For Gamers Who Play Live On the Internet
HughPickens.com writes Nick Wingfield reports at the NYT that practical jokers who call in bogus reports of violence provoking huge police responses have set their sights on a new set of victims: video gamers who play live on the Internet, often in front of huge online audiences. Last month, several hundred people were watching Joshua Peters as he played RuneScape from his parents' home as video showed Peters suddenly leaving his computer when police officers appeared at the house and ordered him and his family at gunpoint to lie face down on the ground after some had called 911 claiming Peters had just shot his roommate. "With the live-streaming platforms, it amplifies the entire situation," says James Clayton Eubanks who says he has been swatted about a half-dozen times while he streamed his Call of Duty sessions. "Not only do they get to do this and cause this misery, they get to watch it unfold in front of thousands of people."
Game companies like Twitch have publicly said that swatting is dangerous, but that there is little else they can do to prevent the pranks. Tracking the culprits behind the pranks is difficult. While bomb scares and other hoaxes have been around for decades, making threats anonymously has never been so easy. Swatters use text messages and online phone services like Skype to relay their threats, employing techniques to make themselves hard to trace. They obtain personal addresses for their victims through property records and other public databases, or by tricking businesses or customer service representatives at a victim's Internet provider into revealing the information. Brandon Willson, a gamer known online as "Famed God," made up a murder to get police to go to an unsuspecting west suburban resident's home last year and ended up behind bars in Nevada awaiting extradition. As part of the investigation, police traveled to Las Vegas to help local police execute a search warrant at Willson's home. Computers seized there contained evidence of the swatting incident, as well as similar incidents across the country, prosecutors claim. Willson faces up to five years in prison if he is convicted on charges of computer tampering and one count each of intimidation, computer fraud, identity theft and disorderly conduct. His mother, Brenda Willson, says her son is innocent and does not smoke, drink or have tattoos. "He would never swat," she says.
Game companies like Twitch have publicly said that swatting is dangerous, but that there is little else they can do to prevent the pranks. Tracking the culprits behind the pranks is difficult. While bomb scares and other hoaxes have been around for decades, making threats anonymously has never been so easy. Swatters use text messages and online phone services like Skype to relay their threats, employing techniques to make themselves hard to trace. They obtain personal addresses for their victims through property records and other public databases, or by tricking businesses or customer service representatives at a victim's Internet provider into revealing the information. Brandon Willson, a gamer known online as "Famed God," made up a murder to get police to go to an unsuspecting west suburban resident's home last year and ended up behind bars in Nevada awaiting extradition. As part of the investigation, police traveled to Las Vegas to help local police execute a search warrant at Willson's home. Computers seized there contained evidence of the swatting incident, as well as similar incidents across the country, prosecutors claim. Willson faces up to five years in prison if he is convicted on charges of computer tampering and one count each of intimidation, computer fraud, identity theft and disorderly conduct. His mother, Brenda Willson, says her son is innocent and does not smoke, drink or have tattoos. "He would never swat," she says.
> His mother, Brenda Willson, says her son is innocent and does not smoke, drink or have tattoos. "He would never swat," she says.
With a mother as stupid as this, no wonder he's behaving like an asshole.
He's a perfect angel - his mother says so.
life-share the phone call in a "'Let's swat" video.
Done and done.
"Tracking the culprits behind the pranks is difficult."
Ummmmm, why?
Brenda Willson, says her son is innocent and does not smoke, drink or have tattoos
WTF? What do smoking, drinking, and tattoos have to do with calling the freakin' SWAT in on some poor gamer? Is this some correlation I had previous not heard about?
Dear mother, smoking, drinking and having tattoos are not good traits, but they are not necessary for someone to be a nasty criminal.
This isn't a prank. This is attempted murder by cop.
Also, the cops should better assess the situation before invading people's houses at gunpoint.
This is one of those times when our government's all knowing, all access panopticon would actually be useful. Seriously, our cops can't trace the swatters?
A couple cases of kids going to jail will limit the problem. Teenagers are always going to test limits, and some do so to the extent that the adult legal system is required to help motivate them not to cause problems for other people.
It was not so long ago that the telephone was a new thing, many parents were not raised with it, and did not really know how to manage it with the kids. Kids got into trouble, and laws were passed to help define what was good and bad behavior.
I know that adults say this all the time, but if we do not figure out how to play with our toys nicely, we are going to lose the privileged of unencumbered play.
From a personal point of view, from personal experience, in my opinion there is no punishment too great for someone who files false police reports, and that goes doubly so for those cowards who hide behind computers.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Really the pranks. By that standard I suppose John Wayne Gacy was just an enthusiastic gardener.
There is *lots* game companies can do to prevent swatting.. by standing up to pointlessly aggressive violent policing like SWAT teams. If cops were to interact with citizens like human beings rather than like some occupying army then swatting videos would not offer the same entertainment value.
Just spend a few million helping the police reform movement :
https://www.facebook.com/PoliceOfficersRapingKids
http://www.copblock.org/
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/
https://www.facebook.com/policethepoliceACP
We need systemic reform of policing in this country, which starts by making sure that more American hear about more cases of police abuse.
I applaud Slashdot for once again highlighting the dangerous, violent, and deadly undercurrent in video games today.
Swatting and misogyny are just two examples of how gamers, as a community, are unworthy of the title of "nerd". These wailing, hyperconsumer manbabies are a danger to women and to everyone on the interent. The culture and community of video games supports this kind of violent terrorism and as we well know organised mass harassment.
We need to keep highlighting these kinds of stories so that the toxic culture video gamers can finally be exposed as something in need to immediate and total rectification. We need new laws and regulations on both the content and regulation of video games and I'm glad Slashdot has finally seen the light as a media organisation and decided to lead this fight.
The perps get such a kick out of watching this unfold on streaming video. I hope they put a webcam on their prison cell so we can all watch them for the next 5 years. Those that live by the sword ....
Have gnu, will travel.
Of course the parents turn their eyes away from reality, there's no way their sweet little child could possibly do something so bad.
The problem is the police respond to everything with a huge over-reaction. They don't investigate, they don't use common sense, they just go in armed to the teeth ready to shoot anything that either moves or doesn't move fast enough and the hell with the consequences, as long as the consequences fall on the target, not the cops.
How the hell did we get such a militarized police force anyway?
Just call the police department and say, "hey, I'm streaming. If someone says there's a threat here, it's likely a fraudulent report." Even give them a link to the stream if they want to watch you game. Seems like an easy fix for 99% of the cases.
Free speech. If the indirect consequences matter, then we should be holding charlie hebdo responsible for getting several people killed. You cannot have it both ways.
They all are sweetie. They all are.
Ugh. People suck so hard. This type of shit bums me out so much. It's all I can do to not lose faith in people in my day-to-day interactions, and assclowns swatting people just kinda makes me want to move up on a mountain and start a farm.
Maybe I'll do that anyways...
Just give them a lifetime ban them from using computers along with house arrest. That would be a fate worse than death - living in their parents' basement with nothing to do.
The sad thing is that--after seeing the ridiculous smear campaigns in the gaming press against their own audience--I can only be about 80% sure that you're fucking with us.
Police cannot tell an anonymous report apart from a true emergency. Regardless, we need higher quality police force and to rollback policies put in place since drug prohibition began:
A California man is demanding police accountability after an officer fatally shot his service dog in the head.
Ian Anderson of San Diego told The Huffington Post he was sleeping in his home when officers pounded on his door at 5 a.m. Sunday over a domestic disturbance call. The 24-year-old man said police had the wrong house.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/17/cop-kills-burberry_n_6888326.html
This has been going on for at least 2 years. I'm surprised it took SlashDice so long to figure that out.
Buck Feta. You know what to do.
How many calls like this end up being real vs fake? Of each category how many are from a throw away cell phone, Skype, etc? What I am getting at, is if the call seems really suspect, maybe a full on swat raid should not be done.
Shoot them untill they or you is dead.
This is a feminist police state.
No reason to try to survive.
Can you marry cute young girls?
No.
says James Clayton Eubanks who says he has been swatted about a half-dozen times while he streamed his Call of Duty sessions.
You'd think they'd have his picture and address posted on a wall by now. Someone should have a pretty good clue after the first run through, must have been some serious egg on their face once they figured out they'd been had by some douchebag in his mom's basement.
Too easy.
10 to 20 with ten in a minimum security prison. Do again in in with the murderers.
If someone is killed as a result, then accessory to first degree. After all they did plan it...malice aforethought.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Why do Americans automatically accept that kicking the door down and holding everyone at gunpoint is a reasonable response to an anonymous 911 call?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
For fuck's sake, the NYT is a good decade behind. Swatting has been going on for at least fifteen years and for many years in gaming. These morons have missed the boat by about five years.
Given the propensity of the police to run into situations with no intel and just start shooting, beating, or choking everyone in sight, SWATting should be prosecuted as attempted murder. The police are like a gun: don't point them at anything you don't intend to kill.
Aww, are you mad that people are starting to not constantly coddle you and stroke your ego at literally all times? Poor baby. It must be SO HARD being a white male!
I agree that Mikeeusa should be removed from society.
It was until I got my Patriarchy Card. Not only does it allow me to commit rape, lynch blacks, and cut the line at Disney World, it also gets me 20% off at Applebees.
...the fucking cops wouldn't have such inappropriate responses to these calls. Send a handful of regular units to the scene instead of giving the wannabe l33t "operators" an opportunity to be guilty of an act of Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law in a manner that could land them in prison for at least 10 years to life depending on just how fucking carried away and in violation of the law they get.
Yeah, totally, white cis men are the TRUE victims of racism! what tragedy that is.
Those that live by the sword ....
...should live by the sword, apparently.
Twitch should add this to their TOS
You should not give out personal information which may lead to your being identified, or contacted in person, by email or other means. If you chose to do so, then you also accept all accompanying risks. Aliases and the use of alternate identities, social media accounts, and email addresses are strongly encouraged.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
I don't think the swatters are calling in saying "This is TwitchStream1234, I'm doing random acts of violence while streaming video online!" They're calling in and saying "This is [RealName] and I live at 123 Evergreen Terrace, I have a hostage." Twitch never even enters into the threat - the streamer has no idea the cops are on the way to his house and is obliviously playing his game.
1) When people are arrested, their friends, family, and neighbors routinely say "I can't believe he did that. He seemed like such a nice guy."
To be fair, when have you seen a news report where a friend or neighbor said, 'Yeah, he was a dangerous nut job that should have been locked up years ago. it's a shame that the SWAT team didn't just kill him and save the state the trial cost'.
Swatting is an activity that the 'Internet' seems to think that it can get away with, because it is a novelty. Once Law enforcement accidentally kills a couple of young children by accident in a bumbled raid, you will get a couple of outraged senators who will make this a federal offense punishable with ten to twenty. The law is slow but it always catches up with society changes.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
You'll never get that past the 8th.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...and are thus too preoccupied to notice the deep state DGAF about stopping crimes or "terrorism". Every attack, real or imagined means more funding for the NSA and fewer rights for bootlickers suck as your self. But they couldn't care less about swatting, even if it lead to people getting shot every month.
Now if it was something serious, like some hippies planning a new occupation of Wall Street, they'd be on that faster than you can goosestep to the dry cleaners to pick up your pressed black shirts.
Suppose Twitch streamers have the option of putting their address in an online database that the police can access, and every time a SWAT team is called in software first checks to see if the address is in the Twitch streamer database. If it is, then an alert is given, and the SWAT team can check to see if the person is streaming before going in.
Phoned/emailed warnings of someone with a gun should be taken with a grain of salt.
I had a friend that was playing with a pellet gun. A neighbor saw it and thought it was rifle or something. And even if it had been... so what? But it was a pellet gun.
This is Los Angeles... birth place of the SWAT team, so the police showed up with helicopters, dogs, and tactical teams.
Because of a kid playing with a pellet gun.
The police need to chill out on some reports. They also need to come down on people making false calls like the hammer of god. Link them over to the NSA if they have to... contact the ISPs... track it down to a person. If people know that those sorts of calls mean jail time they'll be less inclined to use the police as a weapon.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
"there is little else they can do to prevent the pranks."
But the thing is SWAT can do everything to make it better. The cops and 911 can do everything to make it better. They don't. 911 risk their job, SWAT risk not using their weapons and tactics. And job. If you don't need SWAT teams so much, you don't need so many SWAT teams.
But what the hell is it supposed to do calling in a SWAT team for a murder investigation that sending police won't do? Slightly less death on the scene is about it.
Twitch et al can't do anything, really, but the police force can. They just don't care to.
Isn't why cops are due respect and large salaries because their job is dangerous? Isn't a generous death-in-service payout because they can die in their risky job? When you say what you said, it proves their job isn't dangerous, no more than a construction worker or machinist and they don't deserve the service perks of high pay, generous pension and unearned respect.
Or they can earn their perks and take the chance that knocking on the door of an anonymous tip's proffered crazy killer may cause the killer to shoot them dead.
Take the choice, cops. Either become mid-pay blue collar workers or take the risks and the perks associated with it.
The police who created all these unecessary swat teams for some extra cash and cooler toys to play with. There is just no need at all for so many of them, no need at all to have them available everywhere all the time. Its all just a jobs program, and usually one run by private interests (here in MA the MA police chiefs, a private org, both writes the opposition statements to marijuana legalization AND owns the swat teams that raid homes).
The primary reason for swat teams based on real calls, is going after hippies growing pot in their basements. Hardly a reason to endanger the entire community with a bunch of trigger happy yahoos who have no fear of prosecution even if they toss a flashbang in a baby's crib: http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/07/...
You know....as if they even need flashbangs in the first place to serve their no knock warrants on unarmed people with plants.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Brenda said her son would never swat. Then she MUST be the one who did it. Put her in jail too.
She might decide to throw her dear boy under the bus after some quality time in the lock up.
If you do not like the Swat response, imagine a scenario where someone is armed and just killed a couple people.
Do you want to ring the bell, and ask if this is a hoax; with no backup?
> but that there is little else they can do to prevent the pranks
You mean "but that there is little else they can do to prevent the attempted murder".
Mamas don't let your aspies grow up to be neckbeards
Don't let em use teco on VT52's and awk
make em be janitors and mechanics and such.
Mamas don't let your aspies grow up to be neckbeards
they'll never leave home and they're always alone
even with the realdoll they love.
Is it not already illegal to call out a SWAT team for spurious reasons? It's dangerous for the object of the prank and it means the SWAT team is unavailable for real call outs.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Don't tell people where you live. There's no way to get someone's precise address without a court order based solely on their IP address.
'Yeah, he was a dangerous nut job that should have been locked up years ago. "
Not necessarily those words, but I have seen plenty of cases where the neighbour said
"yeah he was a weird guy. He never visited his neighbours and did [suspicious thing x] and [suspicious thing y], but we just thought he was an odd duck. We never realized he had a bunch of people tied up in his basement!"
The tattoo thing is interesting. There are actually a *lot* of tasteful tattoos out there, and I've seen them on everyone from McD's workers to upper-managers. In most cases, they're not in a "look at me" location but rather somewhere that isn't overtly visible when wearing normal clothing.
Then there are the people who are trying to be "unique", which often translates to "look at me." Those same people bitch about being "discriminated against" when they don't get the job etc that they want, somehow thinking that tattoos put on in a protected class for discriminations like race or sexual orientation, etc. Except, guess what, you don't get to choose whether you're gay, or black, you *DO* get to choose whether put prison tats on your face using printer ink. That's pretty much a public badge of stupidity right there, especially when your "art" is a style commonly used by prison inmates.
A have a buddy with a facial tattoo. He's had it a long time now. It's actually pretty cool looking, but it's an obvious impediment to certain types of employment (a more recent one being a senior's home). He recognises such as says "yeah they wouldn't hire me there because it would scare the sh** out of some of the little old ladies. It sucks but it was my choice to get the ink". It's a pretty refreshing viewpoint IMHO, because it seems to be getting increasingly rare for people to accept the consequences of their actions.
Such people are often enabled by parents in this article. I'm sure there were plenty of warning signs that he son is a prick and probably a bit of a nutbar, but she's shrugged it off with "at least he isn't getting drunk and tattooed" (a.k.a at least it's not visible).
What I don't understand is this:
Apparently they have all this fancy surveillance, etc, yet they still can't identify swatters who endanger people's lives, or the tele-fraudsters (you have won one million airmiles) that make a million calls (seriously, my co-workers, buddies and I get these once a week, so the national average much be huge). This shouldn't be that hard to do with a warrant. Hell, I'd give permission to trace all calls against my phone for a month if it meant the "free vacation" robocall assholes got caught and prosecuted.
Swatting is an activity that the 'Internet' seems to think that it can get away with, because it is a novelty. Once Law enforcement accidentally kills a couple of young children by accident in a bumbled raid, you will get a couple of outraged senators who will make this a federal offense punishable with ten to twenty. The law is slow but it always catches up with society changes.
Then they can double the fun and frame a second person for it. First party is dead, second party is in prison.
Of course, the real solution is that cops shouldn't send a swat team on an anonymous tip.
How do the perpetrators know where to send the cops?
Thought, this solves the problem.
ISTR the French CRS have a bit of form.
--
Complex systems tend to produce complex responses to problems, which are not solutions.
Before sending the SWAT, somebody has to actually talk in person to the tipster.
Most bugs are easy once you see them.
Once Law enforcement accidentally kills a couple of young children by accident in a bumbled raid, you will get a couple of outraged senators who will make this a federal offense punishable with ten to twenty.
I have news for you - a lot of innocent people have been killed or injured in bungled raids already, mostly over small-time drug busts. That fact you're not even aware of this belies your assertion. Google: "innocent killed SWAT"
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
Didn't you people hear that Zoe Quinn fixed swatting so it is no longer a problem! Just like she fixed depression!
http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
Oh... wait... it's just a placeholder with a timer.
My bad. Carry on.
Swatters should be shot. That is all. I didn't say killed. I said shot.
Is it not already illegal to call out a SWAT team for spurious reasons? It's dangerous for the object of the prank and it means the SWAT team is unavailable for real call outs.
Sure, but look at the list of charges in the summary. The guy could have gotten somebody shot, but the charges are all about computer crimes and whatever, probably because those were the most serious laws that they could get him for breaking.
And where are you supposed to learn responsibility? They don't teach it in schools and they don't teach how to avoid being a parent when you aren't responsible, nor do they teach that you should avoid being a parent when you aren't responsible. Most people have only a vague notion of what responsibility is.
but it seems often "suspicious thing" X and Y are usually something like "played video games" and "fixed computers" and could usually describe nearly anyone on this website.
Willson faces up to five years in prison if he is convicted on charges of computer tampering and one count each of intimidation, computer fraud, identity theft and disorderly conduct.
Attempted murder? Five years.
Download some files? Life in prison. Ask Aaron Schwartz.
That's ok, at long as the 8th got the joke ;)
> To be fair, when have you seen a news report where a friend or neighbor said, 'Yeah, he was a dangerous nut job that should have been locked up years ago. it's a shame that the SWAT team didn't just kill him and save the state the trial cost'.
Yes I have, usually followed by a shitstorm targetting the media for broadcastng it - even if they were in the right and the nut was well semaphored in advance.
"Sure, but look at the list of charges in the summary"
SWATting is attempted murder in most jurisidctions. I'm surprised he hasn't been charged with that.
Is he suffering from Affluenza?
This is what comes fome zero tolerance policies. People strike out with extreme measures.
more of this needs to be done to affect positive change within the justice system.
When I was growing up, you could say what you wanted on the Internet, and it would largely stay on the Internet. The other people were just other people, and unless you made the mistake of releasing personal information, you could keep it online.
These days, people are making it way too personal. More and more often, we're hearing of people finding a person's personal information and attacking them in their real life for words they wrote on a website.
I've started to withdraw from internet communities for this exact reason. I'm not interested in having some bully destroy my life because they disagree with my political opinions.
In europe, police would never order you to lie face down before they checked the situation, just because somebody reported something. They come and check what's happening and react in such a drastic way only if neccessary. Its the US of A with all its terror panic. And too liberal gun laws.