A Computer Generated Swatting Service Is Causing Havoc Across America | Hacker News Reader

A Computer Generated Swatting Service Is Causing Havoc Across America

vice.com

65 pointsthunderbong53 comments

Is swatting a thing outside of the US? I've never heard of it happening here in the Netherlands.

It seems to me that the concept of swatting requires a not-to-competent shoot-first-ask-questions-later police force. If the US police force uniquely has these qualities, it seems prudent to reorganise it.

Leveraging heavy handed government response by providing false information has a long history.

Tangentially related:

https://www.volkskrant.nl/kijkverder/v/2023/how-a-volkskrant...

It happened in Germany: https://www.vice.com/de/article/9aqy9y/erstes-deutsches-swat...

But much more prevalent are 'legal' search and seizure actions against political opponents and activists.

I case someone is interested in some search and seizure actions that happend in germany: https://www.xn--pimmelgate-sd-7ob.de/en/

US police can and are frequently shot and killed. US citizens can legally carry guns. That's the difference.

US policing is different because the risks are different.

Moreover, if there's a report of a hostage situation or gun violence, there is a chance that the situation is real and unfolding live.

These are two very different lists:

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

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

Keep in mind this doesn't include non-fatal injuries.

It’s time to have tough gun control, because blue lives matter, said literally no one in America.

Biden has been using something like 'you can't be pro cop and anti gun control' on social media

Except for the police, who call for gun control all the time, because of the obvious self interest.

You can see the policy paper of the International Association of Chiefs of Police:

https://www.theiacp.org/sites/default/files/2018-08/IACP%20F...

The IACP has been a strong supporter of the assault weapons ban since 1992, and our membership has approved several reauthorizations of support in the years since. The membership took this action because we, as law enforcement executives, understand that the criminal use of semiautomatic assault weapons pose a grave risk to our officers and the communities they are sworn to protect.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/16/politics/police-organizations...

Nice try but the assault weapons ban is almost the weakest form of gun control, right behind “no guns for the clinically insane.” Handguns are involved in vastly more death and crime, yet no one tries to stop them.

Concealed firearms are what terrify police, so why not strictly license concealable firearms?

What’s the strongest form?

no guns 4 u.

Obviously there’s a continuum here, and this end includes “likely to be eaten by a bear” in some parts of America.

That is how it operated in many jurisdictions, but a recent court case (Bruen vs New York) has set a precedent that local authorities can't limit concealed carry because of the 2nd amendment. Indeed, it's hard to see how they can limit open carry or anything else for that matter, given the extremely broad scope of the 2a and the current court's maximalist interpretation of it.

> US police can and are frequently shot and killed.

Feels a bit disingenuous when more cops died of C19 in 2022 than from gunfire - 60 deaths in 2022 compared with 74 for C19. Also US cops killed almost 1100 people in 2022 - I think they have the better side of the 18-1 ratio here.

(Also taking the first 10 as a sample - 2 were off-duty and 1 was shot by his own colleagues which isn't really "policing is risky", more "free roaming guns are generically risky".)

It's possible for some cops to die of Covid while others die of gunfire. These facts are not at odds with each other.

It's obvious that US cops kill way more people than in other countries, but also that they get killed more often. They are more likely to kill because the US is designed to be a much more dangerous country than most, but also because they receive a lot less training, and training more focused on shooting, than in most countries.

> frequently shot and killed

I'm struggling to find statistics more recent than 2019, but perhaps skipping the anomalous COVID years is for the best. Anyway, in 2019 [0], 89 officers died in the line of duty, of which just under half (44) were due to gun violence. The number of full time police officers in 2019 was in the region of 700k [1]. That's a fatality rate of under 13 per 100,000 - certainly higher than the national average of 3.6, but far less than jobs highlighted as "occupations with high fatal work injury rates" [2] (who are mostly tradespeople or people that operate heavy machinery).

[0] https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-releases-2019-st...

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/191694/number-of-law-enf...

[2] https://www.bls.gov/charts/census-of-fatal-occupational-inju...

It is well-known that policing is not among the absolute highest-fatality occupations. However, that's beside the point. Airplanes are not the highest-fatality form of transportation (in fact they are quite safe) yet plane crashes grab attention and headlines, as do police fatalities, solidifying the perception of danger and sympathy among the public.

In the US, governmental power is supposed to flow from the People - police are standard US citizens. If US citizens do not have a right to firearms, then neither do the police. If police are able to carry firearms, then so should non-police citizens. One possible answer is across the board gun control - with law enforcement most certainly not excepted. Or, police can proactively desscalate and disarm their routine positions - very few people shoot parking attendants.

It does happen outside as well.

It also requires good chances the person accused is armed, it's the two sides of the equation that makes it happen more often badly in America.

If the police have much better weapons than the suspect they can go with more care. This with a culture of de-escalation helps to convert swatting into just an annoyance.

It can happen, but that would just mean some lost the from the police

> If the US police force uniquely has these qualities, it seems prudent to reorganise it.

Part of the problem is that there is no "US police force" to overhaul. There are federal police (FBI, DEA, ATF, ICE, TSA, etc), state police, county police, local police, sheriffs, military police, special task forces and more. Reforming any one group is a big job, reforming the whole system is borderline impossible without a revolution or something.

Specifically, there are 18,000 police jurisdictions in the USA. Each “police force” has completely separate management and reports to a different authority body (most are “ruled” by the government of a city).

No one body oversees these 18,000 different police forces.

The sheer number of autonomous jurisdictions in the US is a Bad Thing. It's ended up as meth labs of democracy.

The best way i can explain it is if the handhaving was a step stupider and had free access to military assault gear. :/

Delete

I have no idea what point you are trying to make.

Looks like your comment was edited ᕙ ( • ‿ • ) ᕗ

It doesn't. The Dutch "Dienst Speciale Interventies" as the SWAT team is called aren't trigger-happy cowboys that jump into the first call they get. They're only used against identified criminals that are known to be armed and dangerous. Common sense is still a thing in the Netherlands. :) They're often trained in the US though.

They'll just send it out a pair of cops to check out the situation with care.

Can't they just trace back the phone caller id, and file charges for bogus calls? It's not clear in the article, is it spoofed or overseas numbers making the calls? Would 911 service prioritise calls without verified caller id to the level of sending armed swat teams?

Caller ID is an optional feature and currently phone calls can be made while spoofing the source. This is why people get so many scam calls. As I understand it, the industry is still in the process of adopting changes that will prevent this.

Between STIR/SHAKEN and NSA, this guy hasn't been found yet?

Even if they catch this person it could be some random psychopath in a country that doesn't cooperate with us law enforcement.

Everyone's worried about AI taking their jobs and becoming an evil overlord of the world... They've overlooked millions of soft targets and the risk posed to critical infrastructure and daily life.

Eventually the call makes its way onto U.S. copper. That gateway carrier should bear some responsibility for how its customers are abusing its service. For example, why do they seemingly allow one customer to make so many 911 calls?

> That gateway carrier should bear some responsibility for how its customers are abusing its service.

Yes, they do. How did this get into the US network with a fake location?

Every week a new zeroday for iOS or Android is discovered. But more commonly... These people pay their way in. There are us based robocallers stealing/spoofing people's cellphones by the hundreds of thousands in the US right now.

I used to get phone calls from angry people regularly telling me not to spam the. I hadn't spam called anyone! My phone number however was being used for it though.

Realistically there's not much those companies can do to stop these sorts of things without pretty serious and expensive changes to our current infrastructure. At least I don't think...

I don't think its a stretch to classify anyone associated with the manufacturer of real world hysteria (DOS like this or Ransomware collectives) as a Terrorist subject to the same toolbox for removal. AI Deepfakes are going to make threats like this serious and so should be the response.

It's already happening. There are deep fake for pay SWAT attack services happening in the US every day right now. Just wait, there's way worse things people can do at scale with these tools...

Phones needs to automatically send true identity of caller when calling emergency services.

Ie your sim/e-sim needs to act as certificate. Certificate is presented to 911.

Same when calling bank etc.

This helps how? Just stick in a prepay sim

Traditional prepaid are basically illegal in EU now. You need to provide name, address and social security number to buy and activate them. I guess US could follow. With that said, it's a terrible idea.

Hmm no? Not in Ireland or Netherlands. You can just grab one at the counter and they work straight away.

I always grab the ones from tesco mobile as I don't want to be tracked everywhere

Could this abuse inadvertantly lead to some level of police reform that requires officers to use more critical thought when responding to potential emergencies?

Over the years there were famous cases of overzealous police officers immediately killing unarmed elderly people, disabled people, and children upon arrival at scenes of 911 calls. There may be a silver lining here.

This is turning into a case of "cry wolf". But most if not all criminals and terrorists aren't going to admit they committed or are planning a mass crime over 911.

If someone calls in claiming they committed some sort of mass terroristic act, then maybe cops should be a bit more prudent thinking, "hmm why would someone admit to this?"

Maybe show up and check without guns blazing for a start.

Cop unions will say "But being a cop is dangerous unless we go in guns blazing."

That's the job, don't like it? Go into construction.

There's detectors for computer generated voices. But it'll make it hard for hearing or speech impaired people to make emergency calls.

Separating deaf and dumb with only a ‘/‘ is pretty fucking offensive.

Deaf = hearing impaired. Dumb = speech impaired.

What do you find so offensive about the "/"?

If only there was a way to follow the money, oh wait…!

In some future, completing a CAPTCHA, will be a prerequisite for contacting public services.

By that time solving captcha would be a bigger problem for people rather than computer. Especially in a situation of distress.

Right, some sort of reversed Turing test.

Not to mention the fact that they are nearly impossible for people with certain disabilities to perform.

Right, because in a real time-critical emergency people really want to be doing "find all the squares that include a traffic light" in a bunch of fuzzy pictures.

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