
SWATters Target Dozens of Journalists - panarky
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/07/neo-nazi-swatters-target-dozens-of-journalists/
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donatj
The heart of the problem is that SWAT-ing is possible.

You shouldn't be able to make an anonymous phone call and have the police bust
down someone else's door guns drawn.

An unverified phone call _alone_ should not amount to probable cause. That's
not civilization.

~~~
penagwin
To play devils advocate a little - If I'm a 911 operator and the person
calling says "They have gun next door - there's shouting, I'm really scared
WHAT DO I DO?!" What do we do? Turn them down? Ask for proof? From the police
perspective - they're entering a potentially dangerous environment, which
means gun drawn until the environment is cleared.

To your point though - the fact that the swatting has resulted in innocent
deaths is evidence that law enforcement is too aggressive.

~~~
nothis
I know in my country, the police would probably knock on the door and verify
that something's wrong, especially if the caller can't spin a convincing
scenario that fits the location. Maybe pistols drawn, but pointed down. If
someone answers and says "huh? I didn't call anyone? what's going on?" in a
somewhat convincing way, ask them to step outside, hands up, and if he
complies the situation is probably solved, right there. You can still have a
look inside, confirm.

There's like so many steps along the way where you can make an assessment of
the situation before going FULL SWAT-raid. Mother in a night gown opening the
door, yawning? Probably not a threat.

I'm not saying I want the job handling these situations or that it's easy, but
"well, someone called, let's send in the Wet Ops team!" can't be the only
answer, either! There's even videos of cops handling this _super_ calm and
professionally, basically how I described it above. So it's not impossible.

~~~
aphextron
> I know in my country, the police would probably knock on the door and verify
> that something's wrong, especially if the caller can't spin a convincing
> scenario that fits the location.

This is because in your country it is exceedingly unlikely the cops will
receive a barrage of high powered assault rifle fire after knocking. The
militarization of police in the US is a complicated problem that ultimately
stems from our proliferation of guns which turn every interaction cops have
into a potentially deadly one.

~~~
joe_the_user
But that is ... wrong.

The US cops have _talked_ about escalating risks for years but US cops haven't
faced actual escalating dangers. One can track the actual danger faced by
police and it has been declining.

The problem is the average citizen gets their information from TV dramas where
cops indeed constantly face dangers.

headline: "Once again: police work is NOT getting more dangerous"

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
watch/wp/2014/10/02/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
watch/wp/2014/10/02/once-again-police-work-is-not-getting-more-
dangerous/?utm_term=.7855e1b0389b)

~~~
ajxs
It's disingenuous to ask us to accept this data alone as a reason to disregard
the risks that American police face in the course of their work. Whether their
job is safer today than at the height of the so-called 'crack epidemic' is
irrelevant to the reality of the day to day risks that they face. For
starters, this data doesn't include the numbers of police non-fatally harmed
in the course of their work. Even still, their risk of being fatally shot is
5x higher on average than the general citizen.

~~~
joe_the_user
Police work is less dangerous than many common occupations in the US but it is
indeed still dangerous.

The question is whether this level of danger is a sufficient to justify police
tactics that severely endanger civilians such as no-knock raids - factors that
make "SWATing" so dangerous for the average person.

The further factor here is that the false belief that there's an armed camp
ready to attack cops instantly with automatic rifles can give one the
distorted impression that no-knock and related tactics will save lives.

However, the reality is there are few people ready to knowingly engage the
cops (since even if you win, you lose against the authorities) but there
citizens who have guns ready for _persons known_ who might be breaking into
their home and so SWAT tactics can be as likely to draw fire and casualties as
to avoid them in the real world. And kill innocent of course.

~~~
ajxs
Here's some data here that seems to differ somewhat from what was originally
posted: [https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/police-
officers-2014.htm](https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/police-
officers-2014.htm)

I would never be an advocate for the kind of no-knock raids the article is
describing. I'm not addressing that by contesting the use of those statistics.
My point is more that _any_ risk of getting shot in the line of duty changes
the entire playing field. Just because it's declining doesn't mean that it's
insignificant. That being said, as said before I'm not advocating for the kind
of overwhelmingly violent responses that SWATting describes.

------
jonnycomputer
I might be wrong, but a whole bunch of heavily armed guys busting down doors
in response to an anonymous phone call is not in the spirit of prioritizing
de-escalation over violent resolutions. I want cops de-escalating situations,
not shooting up the neighborhood, or going on high-speed chases on
neighborhood streets.

Now, I imagine swat teams don't like doxxing either. Sounds like a business
opportunity.

~~~
jonnycomputer
May SWAT team guns shouldn't have independent triggers, but require some kind
of consensus algorithm across SWAT team members for a pulled trigger to have
an effect.

~~~
stordoff
Interesting idea, but the following two scenarios look identical to the
consensus algorithm:

* One officer sees a suspect drawing a weapon, and reacts more quickly than the others or the suspect is not visible to the other officers, and thus fires a justified shot and saves a fellow officer's life.

* One officer misinterprets an innocent gesture, fires an unjustified shot and takes the life of a suspect/innocent person.

Furthermore, I'd worry that the diffusion of responsibility means that the
officers fire more often, under the belief that their fellow officers agreed
with their course of action, or are indicating that they are in danger (by
trying to fire), or that they don't believe they alone have taken the decision
to kill, so can justify shooting at a lower perceived level of threat.

See for instance firing squads:

> This is believed to reinforce the sense of diffusion of responsibility among
> the firing squad members. This diffusion of responsibility makes the
> execution process more reliable because the members are more likely to aim
> to kill if they are not entirely blamed for it, or if there is a chance they
> did not fire the lethal shot. It also allows each member of the firing squad
> to believe afterwards that he did not personally fire a fatal shot—for this
> reason, it is sometimes referred to as the "conscience round".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_by_firing_squad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_by_firing_squad)

~~~
jonnycomputer
Regarding your first two points, a proper evaluation would involve some
estimate the relative utilities of those two outcomes, and an estimate of
their frequencies. Taking a cue from signal detection theory, one would want
to design the algorithm such that the true positive rate maximizes expected
utility, and takes into account how the probabilities shift in a situation. A
tough task, on all accounts; however, the situation as it stands now is no
different, except that, perhaps, we have less control over how we adjust the
decision threshold (one thing that is apparent here is that there is a
potential conflict between the individual utility of the police officer and
the sort of social welfare function that the role of the police is supposed to
fulfill).

With respect to the diffusion of responsibility effect, I think you are
probably right that there are lots of possible unintended consequences. In as
much as an officer decision to pull the trigger explicitly or implicitly takes
in to account the reduced feelings of guilt and increased feelings of peer
support in case the weapon is in fact fired, and if it takes into account the
smaller likelihood that pulling a trigger will actually discharge the weapon,
it may well increase the frequency which the trigger is pulled. More darkly,
one could imagine a squad of officers making it into a distributed game of
Russian Roulette.

On the other hand, I think this highlights the limits of our imagination. For
example, one could imagine the following alternative. Each officer has a body
cam, and a pair at base, who is actively monitoring the camera. A decision to
fire the weapon must involve both the person on the ground, and the buddy. Or
one could have a supervisor of some sort, who can override individual
decisions, and so forth.

I don't have the answer, but I think it warrants thinking about.

------
AcerbicZero
This could have just been an unfortunate escalation of the political tension
which seems to be omnipresent, but once you drag the police into the game it
becomes deadly. I suspect the idea of "counter-doxing" made sense at one time,
when CNN was threatening to dox people over memes, or when someone is doxed,
fired, and humiliated, because a twitter-ista thinks you've manspread too far
(/s?), but none of that even remotely compares to swatting. Sending a
(generally speaking) overzealous police force to a persons home after
convincing the police a violent crime is underway, is on the scale between
assault, and attempted murder in my opinion (and that's assuming no one
actually gets hurt).

Edit: There seems to be some confusion below. I'm not excusing the police of
their responsibility by any means. Its important to remember the vast majority
of swatting incidents end without violence, thanks almost entirely to the
professionalism of the men who have just kicked down a door (or chose not to
kick down the door, but knock instead) and found out that the phone call they
got about a guy in his living room butchering small children is actually just
a dude playing video games or whatever.

Edit2: I'm a pretty libertarian fellow but if you are incapable of thinking of
a scenario where you would _want_ the police to kick in your door and storm
your house with guns, then you either have no imagination, or you live in a
magical fairy tale land and I'm super jealous.

~~~
jMyles
I think I prefer to live in a society in which these sorts of fake calls are
intentionally and randomly made - without notice or authorization of any sort
- in order to continually test and verify that emergency services are
functioning properly (in this case, not killing anyone based on an anonymous
tip).

Making a 911 call is an anonymous venture; there's no deposition or oath or
penalty of perjury here. A civilized society is one in which calls made to
such an endpoint (whether by a human or bot or whomever) are treated
accordingly.

Police need to stop killing people. Stop violating people's rights. SWAT teams
have not made society better and are easily deprecated. That's the real
message here.

~~~
dmix
There was absolutely no need for that cop to shoot that person who got SWAT'd
either. The guy was completely surrounded by police with rifles, at a far
distance, and he was obviously confused at being told multiple different
commands. They are way, way too quick to pull the trigger.

All 911 calls are and should be taken seriously though. Even when you misdial
911 they will sometimes even send a car out to make sure, unless you explain
yourself well over the phone.

So these scammer guys will always be able to get a police response, especially
as long as phone calls can be spoofed to look like it's coming from "inside"
the house. The only variable is how the police handle it and, of course, how
many sociopaths there are who can pull it off properly without getting caught.

~~~
jMyles
> All 911 calls are and should be taken seriously though.

It depends what "taken seriously" means here. If it means followed-up upon in
a rapid way to see if there is any corroborating information to indicate that
there's a real emergency, then sure.

If it means instead to suppose that any of the provided information is true
tout court, then no, this is a recipe for ongoing disaster.

It's important to have a rapid, anonymous reporting system. It's also
important to have auxiliary systems in place to verify information that comes
in through this system.

~~~
dmix
Plus a calm rational authoritative person on the ground who isn't in Captain
America hero mode but instead expects verifiable and multi-sourced evidence
that the situation requires escalation to extreme force. Rather than relying
on his lackeys to observe for very lax rules of engagement based on some
hyper-pessimistic risk models.

~~~
jMyles
> Captain America hero mode

I don't really follow the Marvel universe very closely outside of X-men, but
isn't Captain America a figure who stands in contrast to government overreach,
Nazism, police brutality, etc? I think of him as being a sort of left
libertarian.

I think we might actually need _more_ Captain Americas in these situations,
not less.

~~~
JetSpiegel
> left libertarian

What's a left libertarian? A liberal socialist? Those words are opposite.

------
cosmodisk
Absolutely creepy website...Went on to see what they've got there.. Randomly
clicked on one of the names on the list..Some kid's photo,with all his contact
details,his parents names,photos,phone numbers,etc..FFS

~~~
dmix
Sheesh, imagine if they had access to Facebook's data.

------
walshemj
I know some people who are on a similar list run by the far right in the UK.

edited for grammar all happy now.

~~~
monksy
Also, a list in the US created to target the right/extremists:
[https://www.elon.edu/E-Net/Article/166381](https://www.elon.edu/E-Net/Article/166381)

~~~
anigbrowl
Where's the targeting part? Megan Squire is not int eh habit of SWATting
people, nor has anyone promoted using her research as such.

~~~
monksy
She's creating a database of people labeled in that category. She's playing
the "well I didn't say to go harass these people.. but here's a database of
them"

~~~
anigbrowl
I'm familiar with her database. She's not doxing them but pointing out the
facts of their public relationships.

------
4ntonius8lock
I'm very sorry for the Journalists affected, but I have to say I'm glad it
happened to them. We need high profile issues like these.

It's the only way it will change.

Untold thousands of regular joe's get hit with this every year. No one cares
since it only happens to 'the bad guys'.

When you have authoritarianism, it doesn't always go your way. That's why we
should be against authoritarian tactics, such as sending armed men to break
down doors and terrorize people over an anonymous phone call (I personally
think we should draw the line in the sand much more on the side of freedom,
but this basic level should be agreed by all)

I grew up long enough ago when there was a feeling that the Western world was
superior to the Iron and Bamboo curtains because these things didn't happen in
America.

