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Seattle Police Department Is Offering An Anti-Swatting Service (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The practice of "swatting," or calling in fake threats to activate an aggressive police response to an unwitting home or business, has unfortunately lingered for the past few years. Starting this week, one police department in the United States is rolling out a system targeted directly at this illegal hoax practice. On its official "swatting" resource site, the Seattle Police Department acknowledges how swatting works, along with the fact that citizens have requested a way to submit their own concerns or worries about being a potential victim. "To our knowledge, no solution to this problem existed, so we engineered one," SPD's site reads. The site claims that swatting victims are "typically associated with the tech industry, video game industry, and/or the online broadcasting community."
SPD's process asks citizens to create a profile on a third-party data-management service called Rave Facility (run by the company Smart911). Though this service is advertised for public locations and businesses, it supports private residences as well, and SPD offers steps to input data and add a "swatting concerns" tab to your profile. With that information in hand, SPD says that any police or 911 operator who receives a particularly troubling emergency report and matches it to a location that has already been flagged with a "swatting concerns" notice, will share that information "with first responders to inform and improve their police response to the incident." The report notes that "all calls" will still receive standard police response, whether or not any swatting concerns are filed. "Nothing about this solution is designed to minimize or slow emergency services," the site reads. "At the same time, if information is available, it is more useful for responding officers to have it than to not."
SPD's process asks citizens to create a profile on a third-party data-management service called Rave Facility (run by the company Smart911). Though this service is advertised for public locations and businesses, it supports private residences as well, and SPD offers steps to input data and add a "swatting concerns" tab to your profile. With that information in hand, SPD says that any police or 911 operator who receives a particularly troubling emergency report and matches it to a location that has already been flagged with a "swatting concerns" notice, will share that information "with first responders to inform and improve their police response to the incident." The report notes that "all calls" will still receive standard police response, whether or not any swatting concerns are filed. "Nothing about this solution is designed to minimize or slow emergency services," the site reads. "At the same time, if information is available, it is more useful for responding officers to have it than to not."
Not sure why we have to opt out, but at least it's better than being dead. I think it might help if cops lived in the real world and took a step back once in a while and realize we are not Iraq.
Sounds like a better use for fedbook.net.
Swatting doesn't happen because the police bring WMDs for a drug arrest.
It happens because evil people lie and say that something that justifies a huge response is really going on.
for $150 we offer fire order now & get rape response $50/year
It's an interesting idea but it would be much more effective if getting swatted were opt-in rather than opt-out.
What's next, getting-hit-on-the-head lessons?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
How about SPD assume that everyone is worried about SWATTING and behave accordingly.
Or the police could actually respond with someone who actually, I don't know, investigates the report *before* sending in a paramilitary force? I mean, it seems like getting some Mark I eyeballs on a scene first would prevent pretty much every case of SWATing. That doesn't mean that the SWAT people don't go out to the location. Only that they do not deploy as the *first* option before there are any eyeballs on the scene.
If it works in theory, try something else in practice.
Not sure why we have to opt out, but at least it's better than being dead. I think it might help if cops lived in the real world and took a step back once in a while and realize we are not Iraq.
FFS.
The summary is only 11 sentences long.
There is no "opt out".
Better yet. Should have ordered Elon's flamethrower when you had the chance.
Wonder when someone is adventurous enough to falsely register and use that as cover...
The report notes that "all calls" will still receive standard police response, whether or not any swatting concerns are filed.
So they'll still break down the wrong door, flashbang your baby, and charge you with assault/murder if you try and defend yourself from the shouting armed intruders.
This also does nothing if the swatters get the address of their target wrong. That said, it's a tiny step forward, that the Seattle PD is even acknowledging swatting might be a problem.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
They agree that standard police procedures can increase the likelihood of being killed by the police. Good.
They think that having an opt-in service for having people voluntarily put on a target on their back (because they have another target on their back) will make the situation better. Bad.
Where did we lose the policemen between the 1st and 2nd part? Why don't they simply treat everyone as at risk of swatting?
SWAT shouldn't exist and that should be a state police or FBI level response (presumably more professional than local hick town cops with ex-mil gear).
(yes, I am calling LA a hick town. I know the history of SWAT).
Maybe GP meant people have to "opt out" from the dangers associated with standard swattting response by submitting their data to a 3rd party service.
That last swatting incident (well, I do hope there haven't been any since) absolutely did not warrant a huge response in the form of massive presence of police with weapons at the ready, nor did it in any way shape or form warrant the officers opening fire on the guy. GP is absolutely right that police officers would do well to realize they are "not in Iraq", and that they are dealing with citizens who are at most suspected of wrongdoing. And as long as they are merely suspect, they deserve to be treated courteously and not end up dead.
Given the MO of police in the USA, I seriously doubt that this anti swatting database is going to make any difference.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
The extra checks for the "swatting concerns" flag should be the default checks the cops do before responding. For a medical emergency for instance there's no need for an armed response. If there's a threat of violence the one thing you don't want to do right off is an armed, forced entry, you start by doing recon on the target to figure out what's currently going on before deciding on tactics which if it's a false call will give plenty of opportunity to establish that there's no current apparent threat of violence (and if it's for real, it gives you an idea where and what the threats are without startling the bad guys into doing something you don't want them doing like taking hostages).
I do wonder if this Do Not Shoot list will be as effective as a Do Not Call list. I mean they could try not running in guns akimbo in the first place, but apparently this American specific problem has no solution.
Uhhh... Many Americans are armed better than the random insurgent with just one gun...
I can't blame the American police force for going overboard occasionally.
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"something that justifies a huge response is really going on"
It's probably not. Cordon off the block and negotiate. There's almost never a reason to burst into a house in a city with military level force... except that it gives the cops doing it boners.
SWAT is fucking bullshit. Serve warrants. Make arrests. You don't need to throw grenades. It's retarded.
Swatting doesn't happen because the police bring WMDs for a drug arrest.
It happens because evil people lie and say that something that justifies a huge response is really going on.
Oh, so we just tell the evil people that lie that they should stop being evil people that lie?
Someone good at making phone calls can even turn this into a business.
"Want someone dead? I'll use a burner phone and call the SWAT team on them. $500 per call, another $5000 if it is successful."
There is only one reasonable way to stop this, and that is for the police to start doing their job instead of just going in guns blazing.
Them getting the wrong address should not lead to me ending up dead.
The problem with this solution is that he "swatting concern" database is open for anyone to edit, therefore a completely untrusted source of information. Is it really better for the responders to have such untrusted information which anyone can manipulate? What exactly will they do differently when responding to an address in the database? If nothing, then why bother them with the information?
If this was a secured database where only trusted sources can access it, for example police knowing a residence has a history of being swatted, then it might be somewhat useful. It can still be manipulated, but would require a lot more resources (if you want to get on that list you have to swat yourself a few times and not get caught).
When you squint at it,
"announcing that you're currently at the receiving end of a cyber bullying campaign (basically, you happen to be notorious on the web. that's usually enough to attract idiots) and thus would like the police to think twice before sending full military-level force on the slightest phone call" (that's how I understand as "swatting concerns")
is basically "opt-ing out".
It's being added to a "think twice before sending the tank" list.
Now "What the hell is wrong in your country to the point that your local police has tanks and sends them on simple phone calls" is an entirely different and unaddressed question. Sorry guys, I'll stay on my side of the Atlantic pond, I like very much my calm central European country, thank you very much.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
All the times I keep reading stories about swatting, I can't help but wonder: what gets done about the perpetrators? It seems a pretty clear-cut case of (attempted) murder, so how come I've never seen any reports of them being arrested and either locked up forever or executed (depending on which state they live in)?
From what I read, them thinking they are in Iraq would improve the situation.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Oh Fritz, Fritz, Fritz... just because Americans (outside our major cities) still hold the full rights of citizenship... doesn't mean we're all armed to the teeth like Rambo. You really need to get out of your Hollywood movie fantasy world. Maybe, you know, travel a little...
Swatting doesn't happen because the police bring WMDs for a drug arrest.
It happens because evil people lie and say that something that justifies a huge response is really going on.
The lies that evil people claim are no worse than lies crafted by humans 50 years ago.
The big difference is 50 years ago Cleetus McOfficer wouldn't have been issued a .50BMG sniper rifle and a fucking tank to respond to a report of violence in a home. The parent is absolutely right. When you militarize a police force, you also provide them authorization to use it, and psychologically they feel justified to use it.
They donâ(TM)t call from their cell phones... theyâ(TM)ll go through Tor and use Skype or something.
Uhhh... Many Americans are armed better than the random insurgent with just one gun...
I can't blame the American police force for going overboard occasionally.
Not sure if you actually know this or not, but "swatting" refers to an activity that justifies a SWAT team to respond. Therefore, there is no "occasionally". They are issued "overboard" hardware, and are provided authorization to use it, which is the response we see every fucking time. And of course bad decisions can be easily made when you unduly increase the amount of weaponry 10x in order to handle an incident.
I understand Americans will likely be armed, but 0.0001% of Americans could even come close to justifying the response we see today. Makes you wonder how the hell SWAT ever did their job before taxpayers armed them with hardware designed for a fucking battlefield.
And no, as much as Hollywood wants to paint it otherwise, America is not a war zone. War zones don't have to create policy and process to handle an overabundance of fake violence.
Imagine a modified Apple Watch that, once unlocked (with one of two passcodes) and if not removed from the body since unlocking, could be sent a signal and then heat up (only against the skin) or be sent a signal to trigger small electric shock that only the wearer could feel.
Use Case:
-Police receive hostage call from âoestreamerâ
-Police begin response, but also send a shock to the Apple Watch
-If criminal scum are in the streamerâ(TM)s house, they wonâ(TM)t know of the shock nor have any way to detect it (unlike a vibration); SWAT response continues
-If the call was faked, the streamer will call police and provide a special passcode to let them know theyâ(TM)re safe so the police can just send a squad car instead of the whole shebang
In the case of a real hostage scenario: criminals couldnâ(TM)t remove the watch without disabling it. If they do, and force the streamer to enter a passcode, it could be the one of the two passcodes that deactivates the shock feature. In this case, if neighbors noticed something and called police, SWAT response would come as normal. Or, if the criminals wore the watch and the shocking-enabled passcode was entered, and they called police themselves to test the streamer, they would feel a shock, and force the victim to call, but the streamer would provide a BS passphrase that would still trigger a SWAT response so the criminals couldnâ(TM)t kill the two officers whoâ(TM)d response otherwise.
Did I miss anything?
Would just require a technology that enables a watch to notify a wearer without any other party being aware of it.
Smash your door in and shoot you dead!
Shoot you on your doorstep!
In your robe and slippers with your pint of milk and morning paper in your hand as your wife and daughter watch!
We promise never to claim later on that we saw a gun in your hand and then accidentally lose all our bodycam footage that is if we turned the damn on in the first place!
Let's walk through your "cordone off the block suggestion" and you tell me what you think the cops should exactly. I'm not sure there is such an easy solution that is appropriate both if the call is true and if it's completely false. Which isn't to excuse officers who screwed up; I just don't see a simple, easy solution that actually makes sense. Randomly choosing the Barriss example, they get a 911 call saying:
--
he shot his father in the head, his father wasn't breathing, he was holding his mother and little brother in a closet at gunpoint and he might soon set the house ablaze.
--
So the available information indicates one victim will probably be dead in a few minutes if he doesn't get immediate medical attention. Two more victims are likely to be shot in the head within the next few minutes.
Since the perpetrator has already begun shooting people, he's likely to shoot at anyone who comes in the house.
It seems very difficult to me to come up with procedures that both make sense for handling a psycho who is already shooting people (if the call is true) and also make sense for a swatting call. The best I can come up to very quickly put an overwhelming force to arrest the alleged perpetrator, trying to arrest, not shoot, him. The cops know going in that the perpetrator may well try to kill them, so that's the reason for a fast overwhelming response, in order to arrest the guy before he kills a few officers. Given that the person seems to have states he's already shot one person and may kill more people, I'm not surprised that officers would be watching the person very closely and if it looks like he's raising a gun, or reaching for one, they react as if it's a lethal threat - because it probably is.
So anyway, back to your suggestion. You've got one victim bleeding from a gunshot wound to the head. The fun is pointed at two more victims. What do you do next after you cordone off the block?
Just want to point out that I work for Rave Mobile Safety and Smart911 is a product, not the name of the company.
Do I have to renew it every few years, like the Do Not Call list?
And do the swatters get access to the list, like the Do Not Call list?
...share that information "with first responders to inform and improve their police response to the incident."
Shouldn't such improvements in response be the norm, not the outlier?
Oooo Oooo Oooo! I know this one!
You bust the door down, guns blazing, dropping ANYBODY that moves, including pets. You continue to clear the house until the environment is fully controlled. Then you ascertain the situation. This is also known as "shoot first, ask questions later", but that is over-simplified. God will sort them out, just GIT ER DUN!
Twenty year minimum for SWATTING.
Complete financial liability for all property damage and injuries.
Complete criminal liability for for all property damage and injuries.
SWATTERS deserve to die in prison.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The SWAT response to a call is quite expensive and takes a fair amount of time to get together. A large part of the problem is that these incidents typically start when somebody falsely accuses somebody at a given address of having a hostage or similar which really forces them to use more resources than what you'd typically need for something like a welfare check.
In most of the incidents the limit to the damage is destroyed property and a traumatic event for those present at the time. And police do make an attempt to figure out what's going on, it's just that there's a chicken and egg problem as they need to be inside to know if they need to have the extra armor and weapons, but in order to get in side, they need extra armor and weapons.
Some of the problem is giving the police weapons that they probably shouldn't have. But some of the problem is also that there are regular people who have weapons that have no legitimate civilian purpose that do use them to commit crimes that require a SWAT intervention. And looking at things in retrospect with information that the police can't reasonably be expected to have serves nobody's purpose.
Make a list of countries where Swatting caused a death in the last 10 years.
Your (US) problem is your guns. We (the rest of the west) don't have guns, we don't get swatted because we are realistically not a threat.
I think the problem is that police officers think they're in Iraq, but have absolutely no training to act like they actually are. It might actually help us if police officers had been in Iraq.
Military trained officers actually are less trigger happy and less panicky because they know how to deal with situations minute by minute, and aren't thinking that some idiot with a knife is going to be able to kill them: https://www.npr.org/2016/12/08...
The press release will claim that nobody could have predicted that the system would be abused by criminals, registering as their intended victims, to plant trigger words in order to cause our brave first responders to overreact.
It's blatantly obvious. This does nothing to fix the underlying problems.
------DO NOT WRITE BELOW THIS LINE------
I appreciate that the Seattle PD is trying to do *something* to fix this problem, but their solution would likely not have saved the life of swatting victim Andrew Finch. Finch was murdered by Officer Justin Rapp who will face no consequences for his actions. The idiot who made the swatting call has at least been charged, but the trigger man got a pass.
Finch wasn't a gamer and had no reason to believe he was at risk for swatting. He died because he twitched the wrong way when he was startled at the front door by shouted commands, bright lights, and a bunch of body-armor wearing cops pointing their guns at him.
Should everybody register for this service? If so, will that just cause cops to ignore the list even more?
What is really needed is police training on de-escalation and considering the probability that a call is legitimate instead of just the worst-case possibility. And for dispatch to pass along to the responding officers important information like the 911 call coming from thousands of miles away and the 911 caller still being on the call (both true in Finch case IIRC). Also, training (or more training) on the realistic human response time to commands when an innocent civilian is startled by multiple contradicting shouted commands, bright lights, and multiple cops pointing guns at them. You watch the videos of many of these police shootings, and complying with their commands before they shoot would require superhuman cognition and reflexes.
We need to use stronger language here. Some perpetrators of swatting do not understand the gravity, the fact that people die in some of these incidents.
This isn't a "hoax". This is a potentially fatal attack by proxy.
I applaud the Seattle police for trying to be proactive on this. This service will save lives.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
That last swatting incident (well, I do hope there haven't been any since) absolutely did not warrant a huge response in the form of massive presence of police with weapons at the ready, nor did it in any way shape or form warrant the officers opening fire on the guy.
Not only that, but the guy who got shot wasn't even the swatting target. He would not benefit from this "program" because he was just some dude, not an online gamer spouting BS to another online gamer. His information would not have been on the registry, so the police would have been all "WHOOPIE! Gear up, boys. We can shoot first and never ask questions!"
It's simple. Anyone who calls in swatting gets 30 years in prison. Problem solved.
Uhhh... Many Americans are armed better than the random insurgent with just one gun...
I can't blame the American police force for going overboard occasionally.
Makes you wonder how the hell SWAT ever did their job before taxpayers armed them with hardware designed for a fucking battlefield.
Special Weapons And Tactics crews were never not armed with hardware designed for a battlefield. They were originally issued submachine guns, body armor, and gas masks.
Before SWAT was a thing, police did this work with snipers using bolt action hunting rifles and police negotiators using megaphones. There are no negotiators these days. It's SWAT SWAT SWAT because every time they are deployed, the department can justify more money.
We could compare the frequency of the events. If false reports are much more frequent than a TV-plot psycho, police should respond more cautiously even though it will occasionally prevent them from being TV-plot heros who save everybody from the psycho.
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'Cuz I'm still laughing at this concept.
You would never know if from the hype Law Enforcement put out, but they aren't even in the top ten most dangerous occupations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_fatality#/media/File:Selected_occupations_with_high_fatality_rate.png
Why prison? Why not death by lethal injection? Or hell, why not 'The Chair"?
That's a very interesting thought. I would suspect that swatting of this nature AND true calls that sound similar to swatting are both pretty infrequent. It might indeed be very useful to know the comparative frequency. That would give us the a priori probably that a given call is indeed factual.
I third category would be a crazy person claiming hostages that don't exist or otherwise misrepresenting a scenario that actually is dangerous, such as in a suicide by cop situation.
so instead of putting checks and balances in their response protocol they do this retarded shit? pigs are the stupidest of fucks.
Loudspeaker or phone, "come out with your hands empty." Wait. Wait.
What was that noise? Two more gunshots? Well, this sucks. Now keep waiting.
Wait.
Eventually he gets hungry or bored and comes out. If empty hands, arrest him. If he threatens to shoot a cop, everyone open fire.
Next, send in paramedics to look for any survivors. No survivors? That sucks.
This is a sad story, because all the victims died. But guess what? That was the default expectation. It was already a sad story. It's what would have happened if the cops had never been called at all. Nobody expects cops to prevent a murder. Whenever that happens, it's a bonus. And on the upside, the cops didn't murder any innocent people.
In the end, the score is: government did no harm, and government may have helped. That's the best anyone's ever hoped for, since the invention of government. What's not to like?
Because he's trying to be mean to the swatter, not merciful.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Thanks for that.
It has been said that when those who have a duty to act fail to do so, they have done harm through inaction.
An officer was convicted when he saw a mean being beaten outside a nightclub and failed to take appropriate action to stop it.
Five officers were convicted of manslaughter after they arrested a man who was being violent toward hospital staff. He was in the hospital to be treated for a head injury. Without proper treatment, he died.
Let me make sure I understand. If I register in this database then the police will actually check to see if I'm a danger to myself or others before shooting me?
America, we have a problem.
.... can the only comment marked "Split Opinion" on the original article be a comment on the everybody-can-has-guns policy in the US. Not living in the US, I can't see how not letting the general public have ASSAULT WEAPONS would even be an issue. Seriously...
Swatting doesn't happen because the police bring WMDs for a drug arrest.
It happens because evil people lie and say that something that justifies a huge response is really going on.
Does it happen because law enforcement's rules of engagement encourage killing an unarmed and nonthreatening man in his doorway? And what prompted those rule of engagement? Was it the drug war?