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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.
Done and done.
"Tracking the culprits behind the pranks is difficult."
Ummmmm, why?
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.
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.
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?
That's the stupidest thing I've read today, and that's saying a lot.
If you have ever actually read posts of the Facebook followers of those sites, it's basically a bunch of morons (including many gamers) posting various anti-police rants and meme photos about killing cops.
The sites themselves do at least get valuable information and videos published about clear examples of police overreach and brutality - but the majority of commenters on these sites are the worst kind of trolls not helping reform anything, just promoting more violence (luckily, of course, they are just a bunch of dipshits hiding behind keyboards instead of actually acting on their impotent threats).
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?
SWAT: Smokes Whiskey and Tattoos
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
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
The cops showing up at your "target's" door because you rang the cops and claimed they were waving a gun around, or whatever, is not an "indirect" result of your statement.
It's a direct, predictable, and intended result. This is why the appropriate punishment would be attempted murder.
That the police in the US are a dangerous force that may be abused in this manner is an entirely orthogonal issue.
If you plan a bank robbery and a clerk is killed, even if you gave orders that it not happen, you are guilty of murder. Same here.
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.
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.
Well, the people who go out partying with friends are obviously completely socially maladjusted whereas online gamers are all fine upstanding citizens. Just spend an hour on XBox Live and see for yourself!
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!