Swatting 19-Year-Old Arrested in Las Vegas 327
Ars Technica reports that a Las Vegas teenager is in custody for multiple instances of swatting:
Brandon Wilson, who goes by the online handle "Famed God," was arrested Thursday in Nevada and faces an extradition hearing to determine whether he should be sent to face hacking and other charges. Illinois prosecutors said there was evidence on his computers about the July 10 swatting incident, in which he allegedly reported a murder to Naperville's emergency 911 line. The SWAT team responded, but the call was a hoax. The Chicago-Sun Times said that, in addition to the Naperville incident, the suspect's computers held evidence "of similar incidents across the country."
news ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Err. That's good, right ? Police arresting bad people ?
Not sure why this is news.
Re:news ? (Score:4)
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Err. That's good, right ? Police arresting bad people ?
Not sure why this is news.
It's news because it involves abuse of technology. Swatting is pretty heinous, especially since it can endanger an innocent person and is a gross misuse of police resources. All I can say is I'm glad they caught him, and if he's guilty he deserves to be locked up for a long time.
Guy allegedly does something stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
He gets caught and will stand trial. Isn't this how the system is supposed to work? What's the problem here?
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I wish the same standards are followed when people report "someone suspicious" [one person holding a toy gun inside a Walmart was killed by police because someone called in; a small kid playing with a toy gun was killed by police because someone call in and also mentioned that it was 'likely a small kid with a toy gun']. It is scary to imagine how much social engineering is possible to get others into trouble.
I wonder how things go if in future there is some "meta-swatting" involved? Someone hacks one perso
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I wish the same standards are followed when people report "someone suspicious
It is all about intent. Swatting is intended to cause someone else problems. Reporting "suspicious activity" is intended to protect people. It does not always work out that way but the intent is there.
Someone hacks one person's computer to hack into other computers, and the police aren't tech savvy... Or someone uses an impressionable kid to work as a mule.
I realize the you have a very low opinion of police but most police departments do have tech resources and will investigate to find the actual source of the issue. Any kid impressionable enough to mule for someone else would also be impressionable enough to tell police who put them up to it.
I also have to ment
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I'm glad I live in semi-rural Australia, and know all the local cops if not by name, then at least on waving and nodding terms.
On the rare occasion I get pulled over, I say "gidday" and wait for him to say what's on his mind. If it's a random breath test, I follow instructions, and then I'm on my way. If I've been speeding, I 'fess up, and say "You got me, mate, I wasn't paying attention" - that once got me out of a '30km/h over the limit' ticket and fine with a warning. And our cops are armed with pistols
Re:Guy allegedly does something stupid (Score:5, Informative)
As a non-American, I don't really understand US gun culture very well, but: if there is a likelihood of someone brandishing a deadly weapon, wtf don't police come in with full body armour?
The guy can be rushed, and if it turns out the gun's a toy / he wasn't going to use it, nobody dies - but if they're shot at, no big deal, and he faces justice.
I understand that some weapons are so powerful that body armour won't help, but how common are they?
Body armor is great at stopping shots to your chest, but come on. Sure, in Hollywood shots to a limb are shrugged off like they're bee stings, but that isn't how it is in real life. One of my favorites was in CSI: Miami, Horatio gets shot in the gut, but sticks his hand on the wound and walks around toting his pistol and saving the day.
Gunshots are no joke. One to to your leg can cause lifelong disability. Or how about to one's face? Ouch. I would never want to rush an armed opponent in the hope that his shots will only hit my body armor.
Re:Guy allegedly does something stupid (Score:5, Informative)
Gunshots are no joke. One to to your leg can cause lifelong disability. Or how about to one's face? Ouch. I would never want to rush an armed opponent in the hope that his shots will only hit my body armor.
No kidding. Public media tends to overstate the effectiveness of body armor.
Little primer people, and yes, I've worn body armor before, the lvl IV military stuff with plates.
1. Over half of police killed by firearms WERE wearing body armor. It's not like the ancient stuff that provides whole body protection, you have a front piece and a back piece that protects your chest. A hit to the head, or in from the side, and you're still possibly dead.
2. Police body armor is drastically lighter than the stuff I wore. A rifle round will generally go right through them, as will a shotgun slug* at close enough range.
3. Part of being lighter, even being shot with a handgun will result in injuries, and they'll probably want to get you checked out in a hospital. But said shot can disable you and make you less able to fight back until the attacker manages to line up a shot to the head, neck(from which you'll bleed out or suffocate), or bypass the armor from the side.
4. Are there other civilians around? if you have a perp that you're afraid is going to start shooting, the officer is more protected than the others still around.
They used to call them 'second chances' - you already lost your first chance(don't get shot), they provide a 'second chance' at stopping the round from killing you.
*results WILL vary depending on numerous factors that I won't get into here.
Re:Guy allegedly does something stupid (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Guy allegedly does something stupid (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, that's part 3: "even being shot with a handgun will result in injuries"
I've heard it being described as 'being punched once, full force, in the chest by Mike Tyson"
Re:Guy allegedly does something stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Over half of police killed by firearms WERE wearing body armor. It's not like the ancient stuff that provides whole body protection, you have a front piece and a back piece that protects your chest. A hit to the head, or in from the side, and you're still possibly dead.
2. Police body armor is drastically lighter than the stuff I wore. A rifle round will generally go right through them, as will a shotgun slug* at close enough range.
Damn straight. This reminds me of a police action in Portland, OR, they entered a house and the guy had a high-power rifle with armor-piercing bullets. One female office was killed outright, one shot just above her kevlar vest, one just below. Another female office was shot twice, they went through her vest, but she survived after surgery. It was a mess. I remember it so well because the police chief was livid about the news helicopter coverage. Apparently the guy was watching the news and knew exactly where the officers were around his house and where they were entering.
When I was in the Army in the '90's we were told our body armor was really only effective against shrapnel. Don't get hit by that big 7.62 AK round!
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Military grade body armor with ceramic plates may provide single-hit protection against such a round, with emphasis on "may."
Nitpick: My plates were certified against three 7.62x51 AP rounds. Actual AP.
Still, the plates were only big enough to protect 'most' of the chest, pretty much the heart/lungs from a shot coming from directly in front or behind me.
Oh, and Senator Kennedy went on the record as wanting to ban ALL rounds capable of penetrating body armor, including rifle rounds. He mentioned .30-30 by name.
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Reminds me of Dumb and Dumber:
"What if he shot me in the face?"
"That was a risk we were willing to take."
correct, bulletproof visor would weigh several pou (Score:5, Informative)
>. Perhaps I underestimate the power of the average handgun. As for the face, are there no effective bulletproof visors?
Remember the tip of the bullet is around 2mm or so. Imagine you have a stout nail. You place the nail against a piece of glass and hit it with a hammer, hard. You want glass thick enough to take that without breaking. There's not all that much POWER involved, but it's concentrated in a small area.
Bullet-resistant Lexan is something like two inches thick, so not only is it heavy but it a curved piece would refract quite a bit. Think "coke bottle glasses" times ten. So you've got a flat piece of material hanging off your face blocking your peripheral vision and it weighs as maybe half as much as a gallon of milk. That's not I what I want to wear in a fight.
The thing about guns and power levels is that to do their job they have to RELIABLY go through a leather jacket, the clothes underneath, three inches of fat and muscle, then somehow do enough damage to stop someone within seconds. That means that they MIGHT go through all kinds of things and still do enough damage that you die eventually.
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are there no effective bulletproof visors?
First most body armor is not bullet proof. The best one can hope for is bullet resistant. There are bullet resistant face shields but they are not perfect. Neck, arms and legs are still vulnerable. An shot that severs a large enough artery can mean death. A shot to a nerve or joint can mean permanent disability.
...SWAT team being called out,...
Swat teams take time to assemble and reach the scene. In that time a lot of damage can be done. In the early days, school shootings had more casualties because they waited for SWAT to arrive. The po
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Then this reveals my ignorance, because I would have assumed/hoped that there is full body armour which protects the limbs while not significantly restricting movement.
Whoever your are, AC, I applaud your frankness. Admitting ignorance is kind of rare in these parts. Heh.
Anyway, unless you want to wear full plate armor, like the days of long past, no. Even then, stopping a rifle round--probably not.
Now, a Holtzman shield would work. See http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Shi... [wikia.com] in case you aren't familiar with them.
Body Armor Explained and more (Score:5, Informative)
To understand why there is not a full suit body armor, you have to understand what body armor actually is and what it does. A 'bullet-proof vest' is a multi-layered fabric composed of Kevlar and other fabrics, with a pocket in the center of the front and the back that mostly covers just the heart, and into this pocket goes a ceramic and steel composite plate. The fabric of the vest is designed to take the force of the bullet that hits it and spread it out. So instead of a massive amount of energy concentrated on a point around 2-9mm in size, it gets diffused into the surrounding layers of Kelvar (instead of your flesh). And even then, you still get hurt, very badly, because it cannot stop all of the kinetic force of the bullet, it jsut spreads it out over a large area of your body. Broken ribs, bruised and ruptured internal organs, even spinal injuries are common when getting shot in the vest and that's when it works and stops the bullet from going inside you!
Why the plates then? Because the fabric mesh is often not enough to stop even handgun caliber rounds at close range. The plates are insurance, they will stop most small arms fire, though rifle rounds quickly overpower even full steel plates. Thus your heart is not likely to damaged in a firefight if you are wearing your vest. Its not foolproof at all and it definitely is not bullet proof.
The giant bulky armored suits you see the explosives guys wearing? That's not bullet proof either and its the closest thing we've got. That suit is protection against a detonating device because the detonation is usually unshaped. Even it will at best stop small arms fire, still has vulnerable gaps, and its heavy, and extremely hot. Its utterly un-tactical. If you want to see it in action, there is footage out there of a bank robbery in California from the 90's I think where a couple of guys in them held off police for a long while, tore the cops up badly but they were finally taken down due to exhaustion, vulnerability and the fact they were just too slow to actually get away.
The less than lethal devices in an officers arsenal are unreliable. Not in that they may misfire, though that is certainly true as well. Mace/CS Spray for example is a terrible weapon to rely on. Its a spray, in mist form or stream, that travels through the air to splash onto a target. It can splash back onto the officer at extremely close range. Heavy winds can make you miss your target, hit an innocent, your partner, other officers, and even yourself. Also, a certain (small)_ percentage of the population is flat out immune to it, and even if the target is not, its not debilitating, its just a massive irritant. Police train to work through the pain and distraction and civilians can too. Even alcohol can make a person not feel the sting, and that's a legal substance. Get into narcotics and its a crapshoot if it'll do anything at all other than make it more difficult to apprehend the target. (oh yeah, that stuff is liquid and gets on everything. good luck wrestling that dude to the ground and not getting it all over yourself if it didn't work.)
Tasers. ugh. Boon and bane in a single device. Injuries from tasing are common as they cause an adult human being to freeze up tight and fall over from a standing position. The effect of them is very powerful, but not that difficult to recover from, especially if you are full of adrenaline. So they come with multiple charges to make him get on the ground again. But, the more juice you pump through someone, the more likely it is for side effects to arise. (like death) Getting hit with multiple tasers at once is not recommended if you want a living suspect, they have a limited range as well, but that range is better than Mace and is like a leash for a target, as long as the barbs are in and the device has a charge, it can zap him again if needed. They can miss the target, they can hit too far apart to be effective, heavy winter coats can stop them. They are not a great solution, but they are what we have now. And using a taser on someone pointing a gun at you or anyone else...all your muscles spasm when you get juiced, there is a high chance the firearm in the targets hand will discharge and injure or kill someone.
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Think about the last time you used a hammer to drive a nail. You could probably put a nail through fairly thick piece of plexglass or sheet metal right? Anything strong enough to stop you would be rather heavy. Now think about how much more energy a gun can produce vs your arm with a hammer. Bomb guys might wear something strong enough to repel more powerful arms but you wouldn't want to wear that kind of suit when you need to move fast.
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I understand that some weapons are so powerful that body armour won't help, but how common are they?
Extremely, most any rifle. Body armor generally protects against pistols and shrapnel, but not rifles. Military body armor may include special ceramic plates that cover a small area and these can stop hunting rifles and what the average soldier carries.
Re:Guy allegedly does something stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
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What's the problem here?
Who said there's a problem? Why does there have to be one for something to make the news?
Re:Guy allegedly does something stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
He gets caught and will stand trial. Isn't this how the system is supposed to work? What's the problem here?
Exactly, they busted somebody who deserved to be prosecuted. The problem here that when we read a headline (before reading the details) about law enforcement busting somebody, our default reaction is no longer, "good, they busted the bad guy," but rather, "there goes law enforcement abusing their power again, they probably didn't have a warrant and the guy is probably innocent."
That says something about the state of nation.
Re:Guy allegedly does something stupid (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, my reaction was "good, knew someone was going to get caught one of these days"
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If police response was less drastic, there would be no swatting. The problem is that police don't just show up, knock on the door, and ask if everything's OK They show up assuming that people in the house are armed and likely to shoot at them. The swatting perpetrator is hoping that people will die and should be prosecuted for attempted murder. If USA did not have its weird belief that guns make you safer then maybe fewer people would be pulling guns out during domestic disputes and fewer would consider i
Re:Guy allegedly does something stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
There really is no other choice for them but to show up and go all out.
Re:Guy allegedly does something stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh... right... "excuse me, are you are crazed well armed nutjob? No? ok, great".
See, that conversation is pretty useless.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Guy allegedly does something stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Guy allegedly does something stupid (Score:5, Informative)
as an example: http://wap.alternet.org/civil-... [alternet.org]
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Around my parts, they deployed the SWAT team because some drunk guy skipped out on a $50 taxi fare. *sigh* People argue it was justified because he later had a pellet gun, but they tend to forget that the pellet gun came to light after the SWAT team had been deployed. The end result of it was two police officers got shot...by other police officers. They originally claimed the guy that skipped out on the cab fare shot the officers, until they couldn't find any firearms in the area except their own and an
Gibson Guitar SWAT raid ... (Score:5, Informative)
Can you give an example of swat being used to apprehend a non-violent person?
Gibson Guitars. Gibson imported wood guitar components that we legally harvested and legally exported. Eventually the US gov't admitted Gibson did nothing wrong. However to investigate Gibon's possible improper importation of wood a heavily armed SWAT raid was conducted to seize their paperwork and the wood in question.
http://www.nationalreview.com/... [nationalreview.com]
Re:Gibson Guitar SWAT raid ... (Score:5, Insightful)
It answers your "Can you give an example of swat being used to apprehend a non-violent person?" question.
Why ask for AN example if you are just going to dismiss it as irrelevant. Do you have multiple personalities or something? Or just like moving goal posts?
Re:Gibson Guitar SWAT raid ... (Score:5, Informative)
“It was a scene right out of a Hollywood movie,” the Court’s ruling began. “Teams from the OCSO [Orange County Sheriff’s Office] descended... with some team members dressed in ballistic vests and masks, and with guns drawn, the deputies rushed into their target destinations, handcuffed the stunned occupants—and demanded to see their barbers’ licenses. The Orange County Sheriff’s Office was providing muscle for the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation’s [DBPR] administrative inspection of barbershops to discover licensing violations.”
http://wap.alternet.org/civil-... [alternet.org]
Re:Guy allegedly does something stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you give an example of swat being used to apprehend a non-violent person?
Sure. Sal Culosi [salon.com]. He's a long way from the only one, it's epidemic. Read pretty much anything by Radley Balko to learn more.
Re:Guy allegedly does something stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
You asked for one. You've been given two. My lord you are fucktard.
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So why did you ask for AN example?
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If we have a routine police practice that causes the death of an innocent doesn't it deserve a sober review? Shouldn't we as a society be asking ourselves if this is the way we want our CIVILIAN POLICE to react?
I don't know what scares me more, the SWAT teams or the complacency in which we in the US treat having a highly militarized police force.
Re:Guy allegedly does something stupid (Score:4, Informative)
Can you give an example of swat being used to apprehend a non-violent person?
Here you are [reddit.com]. Don't be offended if I don't wait for you to finish reading, it's going to take you a long while.
Re:Guy allegedly does something stupid (Score:5, Informative)
There a dozens of examples of innocents losing their lives at http://www.cato.org/raidmap [cato.org]
Don't like libertarian nutters, then how about some left wingers with basically the same story (and a book to sell of course): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
He should have seen that coming. (Score:4, Insightful)
Filing a false police report is criminal in and of itself, even if it doesn't result in an expensive, resource-wasting, and potentially injurious or deadly response from the police.
Do it once, maybe you get away with it. Keep doing it, and you can [i]expect[/i] to get caught.
Re: He should have seen that coming. (Score:2)
Do it once, the police keep a recording of the call. When they arrest anyone, take a voice recording of them and run it against all the recordings you have.
Re:He should have seen that coming. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is unfortunate the the law has to be called in because the kid did not have the guidance or the sense to stop anti social actions on his own.
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That is the failure of the education system. And unfortunately in this country, unlike bankruptcies on your credit report, felonies on your rap sheet stays forever, which means you will stay unemployed (and remain underclass and poor) forever, no matter your talent. That way, it ensures recidivism rate stays high, keeping those for-profit prisons at capacity.
Aaron Swartz knows this when he got hit with a overzealous prosecutor. That is why he choose suicide.
Longer sentences (Score:5, Interesting)
Up to 5 years? That's it?
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Up to 5 years? That's it?
That depends on how many incidents can be traced back to him and in how many states --- each one of which may decide to press their own charges.
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Any felony conviction is a death sentence for someone who isn't into manual labor. Even if you don't serve a day. Unless you're Kevin Mitnick or Martha Stewart I guess.
Re:Longer sentences (Score:5, Insightful)
This is nothing short of attempted murder. He may have intended it as a prank, but putting a dozen adrenaline-fueled heavily armed cops in the house of someone who might not be expecting an armed intrusion, and who might be prepared for one, is throwing gas on a fire. People could die if any tiny little thing goes wrong.
Nope, this is pure cowardly violence. Stuff this idiot in a cell for 20-25 years. Let some non-violent offenders out if you don't have room.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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He sends armed police officers to attack the homes of (likely) innocent people, in the hopes that SOMEONE is going to get shot in the confusion.
That's not exactly non-violent.
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non-violent crimes such as this one.
Depends on what you consider violent. This is just using the police as a proxy to do violence to others. For example, would tampering with rail switches so that a passenger train derails be considered non-violent. All that was done was an inanimate object was modified. That does not seem violent. The issue is that the desired outcome is violent.
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Swatting is much more serious than a "prank" (Score:5, Insightful)
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He's not violent
He is, by proxy.
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He's not violent,
He tried to get someone killed for lols. How is that "non violent"?
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Restrained, yes, executed, no. Five years in prison was mentioned in the article. I think that sounds just about right. Oh, and no more online access for him for some period of time after release as part of his probation. Internet access can obviously be every bit as much a weapon as a firearm, and he's probably going to go right back and make trouble if he's allowed, unfortunately.
I agree that in the article, they should talk about "perpetrators" or "culprits", not "pranksters". None of my pranks ever
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Here's a question: Why are police not calling back the houses in question to ascertain if there's actually an incident occurring? I'd think this would be standard procedure by now, with all the swatting that's happened.
1. Said 'pranksters' generally phrase things in such a way that the police and 911 operator are afraid that calling back will get somebody killed. Reminds me of a preview I saw where a girl's hiding under something while the serial killer is looking for her, she's on 911 with the operator when signal is lost. The operator hits callback, and the phone ringing points the killer straight to the girl, and he kills her while thanking the 911 operator for helping him locate her.
2. They also make it sound like
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Well, for #1 and #2, I think the police are going to have to learn how to sniff these situations out through additional training or procedures. At this point, I think we're probably putting people MORE at risk by not trying to contact the people at these residences before busting in with a SWAT team. We probably have to ask ourselves - what are the odds of a false alarm versus an actual situation like you described, which are probably more likely to occur in a Hollywood script than in real life?
If it's a
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#3 sounds like a technical failing that needs to be addressed to make spoofing more difficult.
Making spoofing more difficult would also make it easier to block everyone else engaged in phone fraud.
Which is why it is never going to happen.
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I don't consider it a prank. I consider an attempt murder and they need to be charge as such.
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This exactly. Given the assumption that the person is intentionally making a false report to the police, it should be attempted murder if noone dies, and if someone dies die it should be *premeditated* murder and prosecuted as such.
Yep. There is actually room for this in the case law, too - use of another as an "instrument" in committing murder. Painting a target on someone and shoving them in front of the cops certainly counts.
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The linked article uses the words "prank" and "prankster" multiple times. This is not ordering someone else a pizza; this is ordering someone else a large group of hair-trigger people carrying deadly weapons and expecting violence. People like this should be restrained or executed, not so much for what they have done, as for being the sort of people who would do it.
By "people like this", I hope you mean the adrenaline crazed goons who slime their pants kicking in doors looking for someone to shoot.
More importantly (Score:2, Insightful)
is the question of why its so easy to get a large group of hair-triggered people carrying deadly weapons to violently storm someones house over nothing more than a single anonymous phone call.
Really? Thats all it takes??? some teenager with a cellphone & your address?
I think we need to do something about that.
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Yes the swat teams should be restrained or executed but what to do with the kid? Swatting happens because of police abuse, slap the kid on the wrist for filing a false report or whatever. Make police be civil again the war on drugs has turned them into thugs.
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It's a small thing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ars Technica reports that a Las Vegas teenager is in custody for multiple instances of swatting.
... but to me a nineteen year old is not a "teenager."
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Yes technically 19 is a "teen" age, but anyone accused of crimes that is older than 18 should be described as an adult. I would maybe extend the reasonability of extending the Teenager label to somebody still in high school even if 18 by calendar timing.
Top Kek (Score:2, Funny)
Judging by the looks of him, I'll bet anything Brandon Wilson is really concerned about ethics in game journalism.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... [arstechnica.com]
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I know, right? He "looks" like the sort of guy who uses his "autistic spectrum disorder" as an excuse when called on being a jerk, shouts homophobic epithets on Xbox Live and who is an example of the Internet Fuckwad Theory.
Personally I think the neckbeard appearance is how guys like him show conformity with their community. He probably wears some kind of fedora, or cape, or something. In 30 years time he'll look like Alan Cox, or RMS, probably.
Wasn't there some "Famedgod" a member of Anonymous who claim
I've been swatting almost all my life (Score:2)
And I'm good at it. Usually flies.
Am I the only one... (Score:3)
Since when do we use unknown/uncommon words in headlines ?
Was he arrested by a SWAT Team? (Score:3)
That would make it all the more sweet.
Re:Jail forever (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Attempted murder by proxy (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think it's attempted murder. More like reckless endangerment.
http://definitions.uslegal.com... [uslegal.com]
Reckless endangerment is a crime consisting of acts that create a substantial risk of serious physical injury to another person. The accused person isn't required to intend the resulting or potential harm, but must have acted in a way that showed a disregard for the foreseeable consequences of the actions. The charge may occur in various contexts, such as, among others, domestic cases, car accidents, construction site accidents, testing sites, domestic/child abuse situations, and hospital abuse. State laws and penalties vary, so local laws should be consulted.
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I don't think it's attempted murder. More like reckless endangerment.
Murder doesn't require intention that someone should die. An action where it is reasonably foreseeable that someone could die, and someone dies as a result, is murder. So if someone had died as a result, it would have been murder (by the person making the phone call. The police officer doing the killing may or may not be guilty of something, depending on the exact events).
If a swatting call that results in death is murder, then a swatting call that doesn't result in death would be attempted murder.
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In most systems (including most of the US states), murder does indeed require intent. The charge for killing without prior intent is manslaughter. In most of the US states the appropriate charge in this case would probably be involuntary manslaughter, where your actions caused someone to die but you didn't have any intent, pre-existing or in the moment, to kill someone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... [wikipedia.org]
You also forgot the Felony Murder rule (Score:4, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... [wikipedia.org]
Swatting is most likely a felony in many states. If it causes death then the offender can be charged with murder under the rule.
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I don't think you understood what I said.
The GP (GGP?) stated that murder doesn't require intent. It does. The legal definition of murder in most US states requires the intent to kill. If this guy called the cops with the intent that they would kill someone, he is guilty of murder. If he called them as a joke and someone died, he's guilty of manslaughter. The "involuntary" in involuntary manslaughter refers to the lack of specific intention to cause death, not to a lack of voluntary action. That's righ
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The legal definition of murder in most US states requires the intent to kill.
Uh, no, they don't. It does require an intent to harm, but if I pull out a gun and shoot you in the leg, intending to cripple but not kill you, and you die anyway, I will correctly be charged with murder. And in this case, the perp is quite likely guilty of felony murder.
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It's a lesser degree of homicide, sometimes termed "murder", sometimes "voluntary manslaughter".
This doesn't actually follow. An attempt does require intent, even if there are circumstances where the underlying crime
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An action where it is reasonably foreseeable that someone could die, and someone dies as a result, is murder.
It would be criminally negligent manslaughter [wikipedia.org]
It occurs where death results from serious negligence, or, in some jurisdictions, serious recklessness.
I would consider swtatting to be serious recklessness.
Look up any definition of murder [wikipedia.org] and intent is a big part.
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And when they shoot his dog based on a false report, that's animal abuse.
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I disagree. If the SWAT team are so badly trained, they shouldn't be there in the first place. They are responsible for all their actions, and if they're relying on a civilian stranger's report, they should assume it's as likely to be bullshit as true.
That doesn't mean the "prankster" wasn't committing a very serious crime, ofc. But not attempted murder. The state must always be held fully responsible for its actions, no matter how good or bad the information on which it acts.
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SWAT teams should be culpable for their actions, but that doesn't exonerate this guy in the least.
If there is a defective product on sale that, used in a particular way, explodes and kills the operator, and the manufacturer knew about this and kept selling it, they are guilty of something. If you know about it and trick another person into using the explody-product in the explody-way, you're a murderer too.
This is at least manslaughter and probably murder, in the same sense as pointing a gun in somebody's
Re:Horse fuck this idiot (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:"computer hacking" the convenient catch-all (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't care about the hacking, but he should be tortured for swatting.
No kidding. People could die from that. The days of the police sauntering in gun holstered saying "'ello 'ello what's all this then?" are flat gone, if they ever existed. If someone is bursting into your home with guns pointed, things can get lethal very quickly. Regardless of whether any crime was committed.
Re:"computer hacking" the convenient catch-all (Score:5, Insightful)
Your police is partially to blame as well.
I live in Germany go try and SWAT me, good luck.
Re: "computer hacking" the convenient catch-all (Score:3)
Re: "computer hacking" the convenient catch-all (Score:5, Funny)
So what would happen if someone calls 112 saying a shooting happened at your residence? A Police officer shows up and calmly knocks on the door? I am inclined to agree that the swatting response in the us is way overkill. But no or minimal response likely isn't the answer either.
Well first off, its Germany so not everyone is an armed nutcase. In fact most people will be very ordered and restrained.
Secondly, there will be more than one police officer. They typically work in pairs.
Thirdly, police officers in modern, functioning societies are trained to observe and measure up a situation before acting. So they'll take a look around and see that there's no need to call GSG 9.
Finally, even if there were a gunman, the officers would attempt to contain the situation and seek a non violent solution using force as a last resort only instead of going in half cocked, shooting everything that moves after which, they check to see if there is anything black that didn't get shot in the initial barrage.
Yep, those crazy Germans.
Re:"computer hacking" the convenient catch-all (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe cops should learn some restraint in their use of force?
Hm. That's one possible outcome of swatting. If there are a few high profile innocent deaths as a result, policy may be changed to approach more cautiously. But they'd have to be really high profile, and we (and the media) would have to really rub their noses in it. I don't see it happening.
Re:"computer hacking" the convenient catch-all (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe cops should learn some restraint in their use of force?
They clearly could use better training. I was reading in the newspaper about a cop shooting. It was recorded on video and shows the cop repeatedly shouting "Don't move!", "Put your hands up!" "Don't move!" over and over again. The guy put his hands up and the cop shot and killed him. The cop says he's not a fault because he told the victim not to move.
There's another video on YouTube of a guy getting shot at a gas station after the cop shouts "Don't move!", "Show me your ID!", etc.The guy went to get his wallet and got shot because he moved.
Perhaps the cops could be trained to not give contradictory commands? How does one put their hands up without moving? If I were cynical I'd wonder if these cops just felt like shooting someone and so gave contradictory commands to "justify" doing it.
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Re: "computer hacking" the convenient catch-all (Score:3)
Agreed, and while I doubt the prosecution team would be dumb enough to try and peruse this as a hacking case, based on what I've read if they do the "perp" deserves to get off scot-free. I'm tired of these catch all laws being used Constnatly where they don't apply because prosecutors are either too lazy or too ignorant to determine the actual crime.