
Teen Arrested for 30+ Swattings, Bomb Threats - hackthisuk
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/05/teen-arrested-for-30-swattings-bomb-threats/
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jacquesm
If it's that easy to get a swat team beating down some innocent persons door
then I see bigger problems than a teenager making prank calls.

Anonymous phone calls should not lead to people potentially being killed.

~~~
wpietri
What, from the police's perspective, is the alternative?

If they get a credible report of a dangerous situation, they have to take it
seriously. The clock starts running the moment their phone rings, so they have
limited time for countermeasures.

I surely hope they're doing their best to prevent obvious fakes from getting
through. They have the incentive; getting pranked by a 16-year-old makes them
look like idiots. And I really hope that their procedures and training mean
that they're well prepared for situations where they caller was lying,
confused, panicked, or just mistaken.

But I think mere anonymity shouldn't discourage them much. For a lot of
people, calling the police is a complex calculus of risk. Are they safe from
the police? Are they safe from retribution from criminals? Are they inviting
too much trouble for others? [1] People being anonymous may not be a great
sign of a false report.

[1] E.g.: [http://tressiemc.com/2014/05/02/calling-the-white-mans-
polic...](http://tressiemc.com/2014/05/02/calling-the-white-mans-police/)

~~~
jacquesm
For one you'd think that the point of termination of the call would have to be
near the place where the crime is supposedly taking place. If that's not the
case then the default should not be to go in with guns blazing but to use the
time in flight to further verify the veracity of the report.

After all, what are the chances of someone reporting a hostage situation from
a point of termination in another country, state, county or even town from
where the hostage situation is taking place? Such information should be
treated as hearsay at best.

~~~
wpietri
Why do you think they can tell? I doubt they can tell the difference between
Ooma users, let alone the difference between an Asterisk user on that block
versus anywhere else.

Also, I hope they don't go in guns blazing regardless of the report. A
troublemaker could just as well be on the block as elsewhere.

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mjgoins
There is zero discussion of accountability for the _cops_ in any of these
situations. If they are so easily tricked, they need to either scale back the
militarized force they are allowing to be abused, or become more skeptical
about these threats.

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mrcharles
Unfortunately, that isn't an option at all, because the one time they are
skeptical wrongly can result in bad shit. The same way that the fire
department has to respond to every single fire alarm, even when they are false
alarms. You can't choose where you go or what you do when it comes to people's
safety.

~~~
dmm
Actually there are many cases where the police completely ignore calls for
help and courts have found that police have absolutely no responsibility to
protect individuals.

The police do however love opportunities to justify large expenditures and
fancy equipment.

Many courts have upheld this principle:

BARILLARI v. MILWAUKEE
[http://www.leagle.com/decision/1995441194Wis2d247_1431](http://www.leagle.com/decision/1995441194Wis2d247_1431)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia)
The Court explained that "[t]he duty to provide public services is owed to the
public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an
individual, no specific legal duty exists."

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superuser2
No one would ever be a police officer if police officers were liable for
damages every time they were unsuccessful in protecting someone. This is
perfectly reasonable.

~~~
dmm
I completely agree. It is every individual's responsibility to protect
themselves. The police have no obligation to protect the public.

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superuser2
No, they _do_ have an obligation to protect the public in general. That's the
point of police.

What they _don 't_ have is financial liability for the death of every specific
person they aren't smart/fast/legally empowered/well-funded enough to save,
because that would be unreasonable.

~~~
dmm
> No, they do have an obligation to protect the public in general.

I see your point but I think it's a pretty arbitrary one. Have a police force
every been held legally accountable for failing to protect the public? The
case law that the police have no particular obligation to protect individuals
is well established.

What does it mean to have an obligation to protect the public when the public
is made up of individuals and the police have no particular obligations to
protect individuals?

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dangoldin
Currently in the US when you turn 18 you end up "losing" your juvenile
criminal record. A proposal I read that made sense was keeping the juvenile
record hidden unless you end up committing a serious crime after 18. Once that
happens your juvenile record is opened up again. At least that's an incentive
to play it safe after turning 18.

~~~
Theodores
In the UK 17 is a golden age for crime and getting away with it. IANAL,
however, I think that you are not an adult in the eyes of a court of law, yet,
being over 16, mummy and daddy do not have to be told - so no beatings at home
and no prison cell/fine/community service.

Fortunately most teenagers don't know about the relative benefits of being 17,
but, if you decided that making an honest living was for losers and that a
life of crime was worth giving a go, that year of being 17 is the best time to
do some 'apprenticeship'.

Is this the case in the U.S. and Canada?

~~~
pierlux
I've heard of many cases in Québec, where if the crime is judged severe
enough, a 16-17 yo would end up being treated as an adult instead of going
through juvenile courts.

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rpledge
It's interesting to see him named in the article - since he is under 18 in
Canada he will be protected by the young offenders act and cannot be
identified in the media. I suppose that is only applicable for Canadian media
outlets.

~~~
jacquesm
I am a bit ambivalent about all this. Krebs makes his living by picking fights
with people and then writing about it so if you engage him you shouldn't be
too surprised to find your name in print. That said he's a bit too eager about
it all, there is a 'bring it on' attitude that makes me wonder if most or any
of the things that Krebs has happen to him would happen if he didn't make such
a circus out of it.

It's a bit like a big bruiser going downtown to the clubs and trying to pick
fights with every drunk and then bragging later about how many he bagged.

And to post the name of the kid before he's convicted (assuming he will be
convicted) is out of line and possibly even illegal (he's a minor after all).

~~~
danielweber
Since Krebs doesn't live in Canada, what illegal act may he have committed?

~~~
fixermark
The kind that crosses an international boundary but doesn't involve millions
of dollars or major political embarrassment for either nation and therefore
will never be fairly adjudicated in this generation. ;)

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DominikR
I'm glad that this trend didn't reach Austria, because as annoying as it may
seem, swatting can result in deaths of innocents, if the cops are trigger
happy or the victim fears that (possibly armed) robbers are breaking into
his/her home.

This kind of hoax should be punished harshly, even for 15-17 year old
juveniles.

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JTon
What punishment do you recommend?

~~~
fixermark
Something up to and excluding the punishment equivalent for negligent
homicide.

... and that restriction only to avoid the calculus where the punishments are
equivalent, so someone getting their jollies by ordering armed responders to
an innocent person's house might as well go drop rocks from the local overpass
instead.

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xeroxmalf
> "According to the FBI, each swatting incident costs emergency responders
> approximately $10,000." (from the article)

So $10k each, and 30+ times: Make him pay that $300k back.

~~~
downer73
Oh, I'd really like to know where they got that number from first.

If it includes the salaries of the officers involved, by allocating the man-
hours consumed by each response, then that number needs to be lowered.

I'll accept the fact that vehicles consume gallons per mile in gas, and that
private residences have to repair busted down doors and damaged sheetrock, and
maybe if some other expendables were used, if say some shots were fired and it
cost 50 cents in bullets, but the officers would have been on the clock anyway
(overtime or no), and the taxes are already budgeted for salaries.

Did the counties get sued by the swatted? If that's the source of the number,
maybe he owes a large percentage of that, but then again, maybe the lawsuit
has a point and how swat teams respond to prank calls should be changed?

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anextio
It's not just the monetary cost.

Every time first responders of any kind are deployed there is an inherent risk
to their lives.

First responders have to drive fast to get to their destination quickly. SWAT
teams are heavily armed and accidents do happen. Innocent bystanders could get
shot, pets could get shot, other officers could get shot in a confusion. They
might get called out on a prank call but end up finding a sovereign citizen
freeman-on-the-land at home who hates the government and is willing to get
into a firefight anyway.

All these things are potential liabilities on the department, not to mention
the danger of having your entire SWAT force deployed to a prank call while
there's a real incident on the far other side of town and not enough time to
get there.

So yeah, we can argue about the cost as long as we want, but at the end of the
day the primary cost on the minds of the police departments are these dangers,
and the actual price tag quoted by them must take these into account.

~~~
couchand
That's exactly why they should be more circumspect when busting down citizens'
doors. It's just irresponsible to allow this kid to cause this much damage.

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DanielBMarkham
Two things strike me as sad:

1) This type of reckless, non-violent, anti-social behavior in young males has
been quite common for all of recorded history. It's a shame it has to involve
so much money and international crime nowadays.

2) We remember everything now. No more can you do some bone-headed thing in
your teens that cost 400K and got you sent to juvenile hall for a year, then
move on with your life. Now it's all over the interwebs.

I feel sorry for the guy. Don't get me wrong: this was a lot more dangerous
than it seemed to him, and something had to be done. Still, as the author
points out, this is a shame.

~~~
danielweber
Is it really "non-violent" to make the cops think there is a hostage situation
going on?

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DanielBMarkham
Fair point, and I debated making that statement.

I do not believe this kid was purposefully being violent. I do believe what he
did could have had terribly violent results. But until I receive additional
information to the contrary, I'm going to assume that he was engaged in a
prank -- a very dumb prank.

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comrh
Where did all that personal info on the kid come from?

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tragic
There's a link in the article - looks like the kid also managed to irritate a
slightly more competent black hat crew who dumped all his personal info onto
Pastebin.

But in general, BK is a very competent journalist who is often able to
reconstruct the identities of people in the Russian cybercrime underground. An
obnoxious, pimply adolescent in Ontario was unlikely to present him with much
in the way of a challenge.

~~~
comrh
Yeah I saw the pastebin dump. I was more asking specifically how does such a
large amount of person information be dumped like that.

~~~
tragic
I guess the answer is that there are ways of finding such things out, that I'd
rather not even think about. If you're the sort of person who calls out SWAT
teams to people's houses and then brags about it on Twitter, then you're
probably going to be found out - either by more serious black hats, or someone
like Krebs.

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ohwp
Its sad that most of the time the parents are to blame.

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nkozyra
And _all_ of the time the kids are to blame.

