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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.
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.
"Tracking the culprits behind the pranks is difficult."
Ummmmm, why?
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.
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
Sure! And the Unibomber was just a year-round secret santa.
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?
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.
"An investigations\ by NBC reveal that the police department was alerted anonymously, with the caller informing them that the suspect possessed several types of firearms and had expressed their frustration with the victim numerous times. When asked about this apparent warning, the commissioner declined to comment. An officer working the case who spoke with NBC on the condition of anonymity revealed that they did not take the warning seriously, citing many cases in which police were sent to a location based on such warnings only to find that the warning was a hoax, leaving bills in property damage and unknown damages in lost time and personnel availability. A spokesperson for the family of the victim has stated the family's intent to sue the police department for gross negligence in this matter, and NBC has learned that the caller - later identified as the suspect's brother - is also seeking legal recourse."
'The boy who cried wolf' tends not to apply to law enforcement, because they get run through the wringer when they decide to ignore the boy.
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.
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.
I feel strongly that there is a response in between ignoring anonymous calls, and roaring to the scene in full-on SWAT mode, busting down the door and giving everyone who is unlucky enough to be inside the worst day of their lives.
Edith Keeler Must Die
That happy middle is called due diligence via police work. You don't send a swat team to do a detective's work, and that's exactly what more and more PDs are doing every day. It's a disgusting lack of intellectual effort on the part of the PDs, and exposes them for what they are: Soldier wannabes who are too cowardly to actually enlist.
Hectice, baby, Mercator says hello to you
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!
Yea, that's called an occupational hazard, not an excuse to not do your fucking job. Jesus, if underwater welders and fishermen (wo have far, far more life-threatening jobs than any LEO) were as whiny and pussified as cops, we'd have no oil or food.
Of course, if the detectives use their brains they can decrease their personal risk while still doing what they're paid to do. Of course that implies hiring people who actually have functioning brains... something many departments apparently have a policy against.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese