Linux dev swatted and handcuffed live during a development video stream
tomshardware.com
tomshardware.com
I do hope they investigate and find whomever was responsible for this email tip. At the very least I would want this person to repay the costs of this operation.
Taking someone in shouldn’t happen unless there’s an obvious crime and/or the target had a police record which would suggest they were a threat or were likely to flee instead of coming for an interview the following day.
How? Unlike what the news would have you believe, police don't just start shooting willy nilly in America, and cops in his country do have firearms. Most people who get killed in US SWAT operations do so because they open fire on the cops.
The best example is the Breonna Taylor. The media blatantly lied saying her and her partner were in bed initially. In reality, they announced, and had a pretty complex warrant based off of evidenced gathered from prison communications. Even the Wikipedia page is still biased saying her boyfriend fired a "warning shot" mistaking the police for intruders.
The police did not announce themselves. Breonna and her boyfriend WERE in bed and woken up. Neither Breonna nor her boyfriend committed any crimes - the warrant was based off of out-of-date information.
The warrant should've never been issued, but because it was issued, the police decided to perform a no-knock warrant. That's not just a name, that's literally what they do.
Her boyfriend DID fire a warning shot, as his house was broken into in the middle of the night. Any gun owner would in that situation, you included. Breonna was unfortunately shot and killed while she was in bed (bullets go through walls).
What?! Have you read the warrant?! Dude was literally talking on a prison phone with someone in jail about their drug operation!
https://reason.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Breonna-Taylor...
Officer Tatum has debunked a lot of your claims.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GoOFJF0PpU
I really hate Barnes, but even he did a good analysis on this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xugKbUNUz0
Breonna Taylor was likely involved in the drug operations. There were drugs and money seen ins stakeouts funneling through that very house. Had any drugs or money not been moved out, we would even be having this conversation.
I personally know a woman who did Grubhub/Doordash in Louisville. No one liked delivering to that particular neighborhood. She's a school teacher and said everyone in that city knew how bad that part of town is.
Stop spreading clear and blatant lies!
If all the reputable sources are saying one thing, but fringe conservative minds on YouTube are saying another, it might be time to reconsider the validity of your position.
> likely involved
You're basing this on nothing, and "likely" means nothing to me.
> funneling through that very house
Wrong house, wrong warrant
> Had any drugs or money not been moved out, we would even be having this conversation.
Incorrect. Even if there were criminals present (there weren't), the punishment of crime is due process. Not state sanctioned execution. This is a human rights violation no matter how you cut it or how terrible you want to think the victims are.
And that's really the whole crux and the crux of a lot of issues surrounding police brutality. It doesn't matter if there were drugs in this house at one point. It doesn't matter if Floyd was on fentanyl. It doesn't matter if Floyd really did counterfeit a twenty. It doesn't matter if Daniel Shaver really did have a bb gun.
None of those have a punishment of public execution. Police brutality is brutality regardless of if the victims are criminals or not, and regardless of the criminals' race. Or their neighborhood. Or what your buddies in Louisville think of them.
I thought this idiocy is endemic only to the US police but it looks like German police is the same too? And people just accept it as normal? I mean kudos to German police not rushing in with guns drawn and not treating the scene like they are in the Battle of Falluja, but it is still fscking insane - why did they have to cuff him and subject him to a hour-long questioning at the station - what did it take them an hour to find out? Why is all this considered normal?
Well it kind of makes sense if you believe people are generally going to follow social norms and not make false accusations for no reasons.
Like, all you have to do in a crowded theatre is shout "FIRE", and everyone acts as if there's a dangerous situation and everyone is subjected to being forced out of the theatre based on a single unsubstantiated shout.
Or if you put your mind to it, there are any number of false, anonymous allegations one can make with large asymmetries between the effort to make the allegation and the effort required to clean up the situation.
Remember that police can and do kill innocent people when they storm the wrong house for the wrong reason. Expecting them to be more careful with other peoples lives isn't such an unreasonable ask.
There is a cost to false arrests in most situations. At the minimum, police resources are wasted. People also write complaints to the police, which are taken seriously in some countries, and sue the police in others. There are many costs. You are basing your conclusion on an untrue premise.
Probably 9/10 police departments in the developed world know what swatting is. There just isn’t justification to forgo normal procedure when there is a possibility of swatting. The raids are very “choreographed” and much research has gone into how to carry them out safely. So no one deviates until they are 99.99…% certain it’s a swatting.
It’s not so black and white. There are many reasons why police respond to swattings the way they do.
If you see your neighbor, for example, actively trying to kill his wife during a domestic incident, the last thing the police should do is sit on that report and carefully investigate whether that is true. They should act, because it might be a life or death scenario.
What logically follows, is that false reports like this should come with very heavy punishment. I would say at least as grave as attempted murder.
It kinda doesn't. If one in 10,000 people watching livestreams would do this kind of shitty thing, then at one million people watching livestreams, you can expect 100 instances of this crap.
It's small relative to global population but not small enough to ignore completely.
The fire hypothetical is also incorrect (you can start with the people near a clear/easy exit and some visibly crazy/drunk shouting: people might look around, but unlikely to run around, then progress to more challenging situations), though I don't know a practical % of how many of "everyone" would act like it. People might indeed be forced out, but that's the result of a policy implemented by a few people, not the behavior of everyone, just like in the case of this idiotic SWAT policy
https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/history-l...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Kill_a_Mockingbird
Please don't make me explain further; the history of false accusations in america is very deep and bloody.
Sounds like the second half yes, but according to his story in the YouTube comments they did have weapons drawn (one being maybe a taser, but presumably the rest were firearms?):
> Unsuspecting - I assumed someone else was missing or there had been a break-in - when I opened the door I was confronted by a good 10 police officers with drawn weapons and at least one with what looked to me like a Taser.
Old and fearful population will ensure this doesn't change in the near future. If they had a button to just gas home inhabitants...
May I remind you of the phenomenon of "We severed work relationship with worker W after he was accused of horrible acts, to protect ourselves".
(When proper mindset is, "Having severed work relationship with worker W after allegations, they are vilified" - logically speaking.)
It is unfortunate we embraced base-10, because few levels of magnitude are available to describe the downfall: now we should talk about "1-digit IQs".
The OP wrote that «unsubstantiated» accusations are sufficient for some police forces to take an abusive stance forgetful of the principle of general cautiousness, of "innocent until proven".
I replied that the neglect of Presumption of Innocence can not only be seen in the attitude of some police forces, but in chunks of society, such as enterprises - notably, in some systems firms will openly fire people hit by accusations of the class "Tom says that Dick" (which entails, "of thin grounds").
Now, given that anybody could be randomly accused, and given other logical collaterals such as involving the principle of reciprocity ("the employer discharging the accused could be next"), that "practice" is especially barbaric - those who employ it paint themselves in a most vile coat. And given the absurdity of the practice from points of view of reason, I suggested that speaking of "two-digits IQ" for lurking social phenomena like this one may not be enough.
I can imagine that the police in the US are going to be very twitchy
Linux kernel contributor swatted and handcuffed live on stream [video]
However, in Germany, police is taught in a very different way than US: They are only allowed to use firearms as a last resort, and only to use it after non-lethal measures like the taser have been used beforehand.
They are also asked to only use it to wound, not to kill suspects. In contrast, US police is e.g. trained to shoot at the center of mass as they argue that anything else would be more difficult under stressful circumstances.
I see the situation itself as the problem (that fake reports can lead to it), but realistically, there is probably no way to avoid them compeletely, so just looking at the way how such interactions are going on from there on can make the difference as well.
Those cases are unacceptable, but how confident are you that it's not that Germany hasn't had one yet by dint of much smaller population sizes and therefore fewer police calls, rather than different police training? Again: these ten police officers had their weapons drawn.
I understand the need to take anonymous tips seriously, but I mean come on... an email? I hope there was more than that.
If I assume the counterfactual where someone's attempt to tip police was ignored and an incident results, the public will criticize the police undoubtedly. Still, at some point there needs to be a minimum for verifiable, trustworthy communication if such a tip results in swatting. If I effortlessly generate dozens of plausibly-sounding scenarios, tip off the police in intervals spaced far enough and automate it, when would the police start categorizing anonymous emails as noise?
Also, as you pointed out, if it turns out to be a real situation, it will look horrible if the police knew of it beforehand. Even more, a victim in a situation that requires a swat team might have a quite limited ability to communicate, lowering the reasonable threshold even more.
Lastly, there isn't really a measured response. If you think there might be an actual dangerous situation, sending a few normal officers to check it out is reckless at best and might actually make the situation worse, as the attacker is alerted of the impeding police response and the police doesn't have the ability to respond swiftly.
At some point I felt like they're not trusting me. Why do they trust an email?
I have no idea if this would actually work similarly but it is at least what people do in movies when they want to provoke a police response! And it does make sense.
How many people do you know who would get a threatening email about imminent violence and play it off because it's likely a fake? Perhaps some the most zen among us! The rest of us would almost definitely want to (hire mercenaries to) take reasonable steps to stop it. A few hours of police time in exchange for preventing a potential terrorist event seems like a fair trade, anyway...
> How many people do you know who would get a threatening email about imminent violence and play it off because it's likely a fake?
That would be every single popular political pundit on social media (if you're not a stickler for "email"), then every celebrity, etc, so a huge number of people
Dood, thats not remotely SWAT. This isnt even some kind of special police. This is german normal police. And usually they are pretty damn overwhelmed by everything because they are horrible undestaffed.
I loved how the police explained that the live stream had to be shut down due to an ongoing investigation, but he might resume it soon, because the issue might get resolved quickly.
Still a horrible and dangerous thing to do to somebody, but I'm glad the police were calm, polite, and professional.
> I thought about making the incident accessible to a wider public through YT for 24 hours and ultimately decided to do so in order to document to us Germans and Europeans that SWAT'ing is not a phenomenon limited to the USA and is dangerous. also to document what kind of criminal energy there is and how completely inappropriately the police acted in my case in my opinion.
> During a live stream while bi-secting a SPARC Linux bug in our ExactCODE GmbH office, the bell rang, the door was banged and the police were called. Unsuspecting - I assumed someone else was missing or there had been a break-in - when I opened the door I was confronted by a good 10 police officers with drawn weapons and at least one with what looked to me like a Taser. After I was identified, I was immediately handcuffed when I heard “hands out of my pockets” in the video!!! I had seen about 10 police officers in front of and in our office, and it wasn't until the following day that neighbors reported that the entire street, right up to the next intersection, was full of a dozen (or more) emergency vehicles!!! about 10 police cars, 2 fire departments, 1 ambulance, an emergency doctor etc...!!!
> According to the conversation with the police, an email was sent to the police and another to other rescue workers saying that I had killed my wife and now wanted to take my own life. I assume an email of the type Hans Musterman 6345234@xyz? With his real name @t-oline, hardly anyone would provoke such an action. I find it completely disproportionate that the police go out with such a number of devices and personnel to a registered company registered as a GmbH and not first Google the name and company in order to presumably find my YouTube (and Twitch) activities directly.
> A team of two or four officers, and if necessary a test call to the company, would have been more than sufficient given such low-quality evidence. Likewise, neither to identify myself nor to put handcuffs on me immediately. The police should act more prudently and balanced here and not allow themselves to be paraded like this.
> But I would like to express my gratitude that I was otherwise treated reasonably humanely, that I survived it and that there was no other damage to property. It could have been much worse. If we had all just been on our lunch break, for example, the office would probably have been forced open by the fire department. To be honest, completely unacceptable for an IT company...! :-/
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIEwcTKUFCA (translated inline by Google Translate)
What purpose would this serve? If you receive an emergency tip like this, extensive research on what might be registered on that address and then check whether someone happens to be active on social media right now doesn't seem to be that good of a call. I don't mean to blame the developer - if I just had a few guns pointed at me, I would not be calm about this, either. But this isn't reasonable research given the time constraints.
What was that is very regular tactics and barely any weapons. It was a polite visit by police expecting reasonable cooperation from the target person, not heavy armed resistance.
> the whole street was full of about 10 (or more) emergency vehicles right up to the next intersection!!! about 10 police cars, 2 fire departments, 1 ambulance, an emergency doctor
Firearm related deaths per 100,000[1]:
Germany: 0.065
US: 4.054 (62.4x higher)
Firearm ownership per 100 people[2]:
Germany: 19.6
US: 120.5 (6.15x higher)
If those stats are to be believed there's approximately 10x firearm deaths per gun in the US compared to Germany.
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm...
[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian...
Then you have safe gun storage, which is mandatory in Germany and is subject to routine inspections.
It is also mandatory to have an ownership license for any type of gun. You will be automatically denied this e.g. if you are formerly convicted of a serious crime, have mental health issues, or a history with drug use or violence. And you need to provide a reason for owning a gun, where "self defence" does not count.
If you can prohibit people from owning guns made for killing lots of other people, and prohibit people who obviously should not own guns from getting them, you've made substantial progress.
Videos of unlicensed Germans doing this are online.
For example I know a guy that has more than 400 firearms. For him it is a business, not a passion, he does not even carry one, but he is giving a wrong impression of gun ownership.
Unless there was something specific about the email's contents justifying it, the police seem very much at fault here for attacking someone based on an entirely unauthenticated, unverifiable, untraceable message. Society readily holds people who fall for obvious phishing attacks responsible for their negligence, and this seems similar.
Clearly the system as it exists today is ripe for abuse.
Re: the last point, I would definitely not vote to have my police ignore anonymous tips, if it ever came up in a referendum. I think it's a pretty damn good use of tax dollars, as far as these things go.
Besides, it's pretty damn simple to just a stolen phone or compromised computer to do this sort of thing. If you really were to get the identity this way, you now likely have two victims instead of one...
You have a complete recording of the phone call, so you can verify if the person speaking in it was the owner of the phone number. If it's not a match, then you can start investigating friends and family of the owner who would have had access to the phone.
If police can't figure out how to do this basic shit then why are we trusting them with SWAT gear?
If they called 911 using a voice modulator then the call should have been ignored in the first place.
1. How the hell do you plan to tell the difference between some prankster using voice modulation and a genuine caller stuck in a situation with weird acoustics? Or are you too dense to realize that emergencies don't always happen in perfect sound conditions?
2. Are you seriously okay with giving police dispatchers godlike powers to decide if your desperate plea for help is "real enough" for them? And if they get it wrong and write you off as a scammer while you're bleeding out, I guess that's just tough luck, huh? Still feeling smug about your brilliant plan now?
Maybe "murder" is a bit strong, but it certainly has led to people dying in the past, and it's not like "death" is a bizarre, unforeseeable consequence of sending in a dozen heavily armed people into an innocent person's house. If I shot a gun into the crowd in Times Square, and someone got hit and died, I don't think it'd be a very good defense to say "I was just trying to shoot into the crowd, I didn't mean to kill anyone!"
Frankly, I don't get it, it's really not very funny, and carries a risk of jail time in the process.
It doesn't matter that you tricked someone else into pulling the trigger.
Same thing can happen if your partner in crime dies.
For years now Germany is having an issue with organized trolls who target live streamers with swatting. A live stream of the resulting police action appears to be the main motivation.
I cannot find anything in English about the phenomenon so here's an article from the German police union GdP: https://www.polizei-dein-partner.de/themen/internet-mobil/de...
"Rust bros" have been involved in approximately 0% of the Linux kernel drama that has surfaced to the level of being covered elsewhere, historically speaking.
Linus Torvalds is not averse to "drama", and given the needlessness of your phrasing neither are you apparently. Stones and glass houses, etc.