Amazon Ring cameras used in nationwide ‘swatting’ spree, US Justice Dept. says

Before that I will have turned on a dim salt lamp in our bedroom with a small butten I have near the bed, as to not wake my gf. I turn it off with the wall switch while leaving the room.

The light in the hallway is dim because it is still early. Since he didn't poop I only need a dim light in the changing area operated by my foot.

Various lights in the house turn on automatically by movement or door opening. Lights near the front door go on dinly just before subset and get brighter with movement. The wall switch in the kitchen turns on multiple lights including cabinet downlighting.

These things and more, and the fact I can change them relatively easily and wihtout rewiring, I find convenient and that brings me value.

You don't have to understand though, we both can like different things.

The ones I use are made by Lutron, who has a long history of making conventional light switches. They act just like normal switches, and I could sell my house without the home automation system, and it would be perfectly functional for the new owner.

Having carefully designs home automation brings lots of little conveniences. When I walk into a room when it is dark, the light automatically turns on. When it becomes cloudy during the day, lights in the darker living areas turn on. When I go to bed, I press one button, and all the lights in the house turn off, and the motion sensors are disabled. Another button press in the morning re-enables the sensors and turns on the lights in all the "morning activity" areas of the house.

Bottom line is that I seldom have to press a light switch. I always automagically have light when and where I need it.

I am fed up with phone apps already because of that, nearly no month or several week goes by without one warning me: UPDATE! NOW!

And then when you update its behaviour is altered, many times functionalities you liked are gone. The whole thing is more like a nuisance than genuine help.

Exposing myself potentially to the same kind of problems concerning my whole home?! No thank you!

(recently, after long deliberation and consultation with my keen wife, I gave up the idea of robotic vacums. some are excluded due to shameless price or physical configuration, but many due to the inability to operate without a phone app. i will do my vacuuming without connecting to home wifi, thanks)

I have also used them to relocate a switch to a more useful place for much cheaper/in a rental. (Automatic switch in the out of reach or inconvenient location, battery switch in reach of where I want it).

Smart lights and outlets are the only smart thing in my home and they really are great imho

It was sorta a pain to set up, over half a decade ago, now it’s small tweaks now and then but otherwise just works.

Smarthomes are currently better at monitoring than they are at control, there's just not that much that needs real automation

Security.

Until someone hacks the fire extinguisher and makes it spray chemicals at you. Then you'll need to add a smart fire extinguisher extinguisher.

and yes I have great fun with it.

Big communities exist online for it now, but a majority of the young professionals we interview have AV/IT racks at home, usually outfitted with a 3D printer or two on top. Whether it's for their home theaters, their video work, or some general labbing or engineering, they're proud of them, and it doesn't hurt to demonstrate investment into their interests and working knowledge.

It might not be typical of coders who favor high mobility or other software-only roles like application support and front end, or it might just be regional since we're in a tech and research hub surrounded by colo facilities and data centers, but it's kind of funny how naked and vulnerable people look when they come in with just a MacBook loaded with their livelihoods.

One definition (there are many) of assault is as follows: "... the intentional application of force upon another person, directly or indirectly, without the other person’s consent. Classified as a criminal act, it can and will be tried in court."

WEAPONS ACT 1990 - SECT 78 Weapons not to be discharged or operated - a fine- but also usually, a range of offences related to use, possession, storage of the weapon and ammunition

CRIMINAL CODE 1899 - SECT 69 Going armed so as to cause fear (1) Any person who goes armed in public without lawful occasion in such a manner as to cause fear to any person is guilty of a misdemeanour, and is liable to imprisonment for 2 years.

469 Wilful damage (1) Any person who wilfully and unlawfully destroys or damages any property is guilty of an offence which, unless otherwise stated, is a misdemeanour, and the person is liable, if no other punishment is provided, to imprisonment for 5 years.

Punishment in special cases 1 Destroying or damaging premises by explosion If— (a) the property in question is premises; and (b) the destruction or damage is caused by an explosion; and (c) either— (i) anyone is in or on the premises when the explosion happens; or (ii) the destruction or damage actually endangers anyone’s life; the offender commits a crime. Penalty— Maximum penalty—life imprisonment.

but what you will find is that this sort of activity rarely happens randomly- usually there is a relationship between the victim and the attacker- so something related to stalking, extortion (demanding money with menaces) etc. And those all carry heavy possible penalties. (5 years, 7 years etc)

> Whoever discharges a firearm as defined in section one hundred and twenty-one of chapter one hundred and forty, a rifle or shotgun within five hundred feet of a dwelling or other building in use, except with the consent of the owner or legal occupant thereof, shall be punished by a fine of not less than fifty nor more than one hundred dollars or by imprisonment in a jail or house of correction for not more than three months, or both.

This is the law that would definitely apply. Interestingly, it appears that there is a bill before the state legislature that would cover specifically shooting at a dwelling (with intent to hit it), which would carry 5 years/$10k fine.

Depending on particular fact patterns, it might fall under attempted murder, reckless endangerment, or other charge in a similar vein. This sort of stuff tends to be extremely jursidiction-dependent.

In this case, there is a demonstrated and repeated danger from these swatting attacks. They don't have proper risk management in the police forces of the us, as demonstrated by swatting killing people. The authorities being too slow is not a demonstrated problem, it's the opposite.

Especially the one where cops were already there.

This isn't a giant dial that says "cops go fast" <-> "cops go slow"

Specifically police need to learn about time, distance, and cover. Arrive on the scene and take cover a safe distance away from the perceived threat. Take time to identify the perceived threat and confirm they are really a danger. Only then should they attempt to deal with the threat if it actually proves to be one. This would have saved the life of Tamir Rice, a harmless child who was shot by a police officer who had not even finished stopping his car when he shot and killed the unarmed 12 year old. This would have saved the life of 22 year old John Crawford III who was shot by a police officer at WalMart. Crawford had picked up an un-packaged BB gun and then continued shopping. Someone misunderstood the situation and called the police. When officers arrived they ignored the lack of distress among other customers which should have been present, and fired shots at Crawford almost immediately upon entering the store.

There are many accounts like this. Police behavior leads to many unnecessary deaths and swatting is only a threat because of police failing to assess a situation firsthand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster

How can the caller be more culpable than the one actually commiting the crime? This literally never happens in the history of crime.

I’m simply pointing to the most similar Federal crimes and pointing out that the sentences are proportional. For comparison, Federal attempted murder-to-hire is only 10 years and that’s clearly a much worse crime.

Tragically there’s now over 1000 cases of swatting per year. Only one person (Andrew Finch) has been killed by police. (The swatter in this case was charged with involuntary manslaughter and got 20 years in jail).

It’s not comparable to murder because it’s much more likely that someone would be killed by you offering them a ride in your car than by swatting them.

It's an awful problem that will exist as long as people suck.

> 1.2 guns per citizen

After 1 gun, do guns truly become more dangerous? For someone opening a door, I don't think handgun vs AR vs shotgun is a very meaningful distinction - you're going to die if you get shot in the face

> loaded up to the gills

Isn't it true that one of the top arguments used against gun control that criminals will have the weapons anyways?

Therefore, as a LEO being summoned to a potential crime scene, isn't it true that they would behave in accordance with the person being a potential criminal, and therefore living outside of "guns per citizen" statistics? And therefore isn't the global approach to SWATting likely done without respect to the local environment, but instead in accordance with best practices of deescalation and safety?

I look forward to hearing you expand your thoughts.

Also: 2/3rds of Americans don't own a gun, and only 44% even live in a house with a gun.

Ever notice that only in a very small number of cases does a "swatting" result in any danger to the officers, such as the homeowner shooting an officer? The number of times this has happened is in the single digits. Hint: that's because there's little danger to police responding to these sorts of calls.

In fact, there's very little danger to police officers in the US, period. They have a murder rate lower than the general population, because people know that cops don't give a shit about when you or I are murdered (nation-wide the clearance rate for homicides is abysmal, one of the lowest in the developed world) but if a cop is killed, the killer will be correctly identified, found, and arrested within hours.

Being a cop in the US doesn't even rank in the top ten in terms of deaths on the job. Retail workers and cab drivers have a far higher homicide-on-the-job rate;

Pre-COVID the #1 killer of police, overwhelmingly, was traffic collisions, suicide, and heart disease.

During/after COVID, the #1 killer, despite police getting first-in-line access to the vaccine, was/is COVID. Completely preventable.

The reason these "swattings" are so dangerous is because police show up expecting a dangerous situation, confrontation, even though it's incredibly rare.

Far smaller population than the USA, and loads more variables to consider when comparing the two. But at least one country gets it pretty Damn Right with Guns!

That's because both countries are based on the continued enforcement of white supremacy.

> Keffals was swatted in Canada, and Canada has a far less extreme police and gun culture compared to the USA.

I think it's egregious that she was actually arrested for something that the police should have realized was fake, or simply been able to sort out in-person. However, her claim that she woke up with an assault rifle in her face was simply not true. In the context of American swatting, it's more like swatting-light since Canadian police actually require training and attempt to de-escalate instead of solving every problem with guns.

> Officers did not conduct what is sometimes referred to as a “dynamic entry” into Ms. Sorrenti’s residence. Rather, they knocked on the door, announced themselves as police officers, and occupants answered. Any attempt by uninvolved third parties to suggest otherwise is inaccurate and irresponsible.

https://www.londonpolice.ca/en/news/statement-from-police-ch...

I don't think that's what they're implying at all, given the context is about swatting.

That fact that citizens of the US have simply accepted that the latter is even remotely a proper response to even "someone being held hostage and in imminent danger of being killed" calls is both sadden, and maddening at the same time

You see not every police dept in the world has removed all investigation from the responsibility of their police forces..

But more importantly, with an order of magnitude rarer killings, there is much less of a “we’re at war with the bad guys” culture. In some countries discharging a weapon brings automatic suspension for the investigation, even if nobody gets hurt. Cops simply don’t tend get trigger happy in this environment.

Outside of North America, you don't have to worry about police violence too much in developed nations.

> An 18-year-old has been arrested in Canada after investigators traced “swatting” calls at Volunteer High School in Hawkins County and Watauga High School in Boone, N.C. to him.

Note that the caller was in Canada, but the swatting and presumably violent police response was in North Carolina. Swatting is as American as apple pie and baseball, IMO.

It could take on the order of a few seconds per password in the worst case. Normally a few Milliseconds.

So 1,000,000 breached passwords * 100ms per check is 100,000 CPU seconds or about 30 CPU hours to check all passwords. The is easily paraliseable so imagine more like 10-20 minutes in parallel.

There is a lot of chaos in nature too though, and I think even with great childhood backgrounds there are some individuals that just want to go a different path, for better or for worse.