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Crime AI United States

A Computer Generated Swatting Service Is Causing Havoc Across America 97

Motherboard has discovered a swatting-as-a-service account on Telegram that uses computer generated voices to issue bomb and mass shooting threats against highschools and other locations across the country. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: Known as "Torswats" on the messaging app Telegram, the swatter has been calling in bomb and mass shooting threats against highschools and other locations across the country. Torswat's connection to these wide ranging swatting incidents has not been previously reported. The further automation of swatting techniques threatens to make an already dangerous harassment technique more prevalent. Swatting is when someone calls in a bogus threat in an attempt to direct law enforcement resources to a particular home, school, or other location. Often, swatting calls result in heavily armed police raiding an innocent victim's home. At least one case has resulted in police killing the unsuspecting occupant.

Torswats carries out these threatening calls as part of a paid service they offer. For $75, Torswats says they will close down a school. For $50, Torswats says customers can buy "extreme swattings," in which authorities will handcuff the victim and search the house. Torswats says they offer discounts to returning customers, and can negotiate prices for "famous people and targets such as Twitch streamers." Torswats says on their Telegram channel that they take payment in cryptocurrency. [...] On their Telegram channel, Torswats has uploaded at least 35 distinct recordings of calls they appear to have made. Torswats may have made many more swatting calls on others' behalf, though: each filename includes a number, with the most recent going up to 170. Torswats also recently shuttered their channel before reappearing on Telegram in February.

In all of those 35 recordings except two, Torswats appears to have used a synthesized voice. The majority of the calls are made with a fake male sounding voice; several include a woman which also appears to be computer generated. Torswats is seemingly able to change what the voice is saying in something close to real-time in order to respond to the operator's questions. These sometimes include "where are you located," "what happened," and "what is your name?" [...] Earlier this month, Torswats allegedly changed their tactics: they claimed to have made a swatting call using their own voice. In the subsequent recording, they start with much the same script as their automated voice. "I've done something really bad and want to kill myself," they tell the operator. They then claim they came out to their parents as a transgender woman, that they have an AR-15, and will shoot any police who respond. "Forgot to cut off my laugh at the end," Torswats wrote on Telegram.
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A Computer Generated Swatting Service Is Causing Havoc Across America

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  • A service like this is what will finally de-escalate these crazy tactics I would think. When the call comes in, it should be assumed fake until proven otherwise. Now - that doesn't mean you shouldn't investigate, but it means you don't go breaking down doors and shooting people based on a phone call alone.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      This is a police problem, shutting down this awful service (and they should) won't fix what's broken.
      • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Friday April 14, 2023 @08:36AM (#63449188)

        Indeed. It is far too easy to trigger maximum force from the police. That is not acceptable.

        • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Friday April 14, 2023 @09:25AM (#63449288)

          And the violent cave-men modding this down are most definitely part of the problem.

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            Abuse of mod points is a real problem. So is your "my team your team" bullshit. Your constant focus on the other team being always wrong about everything is representative of the tribalism our overlords have used to ratchet up more and more power and money. Get some perspective and read a history book you useless blathering self-righteous cunt.
            • by gweihir ( 88907 )

              I do not do "my team - your team" nonsense and I do not do tribalism. (Tribalism is a massive, massive problem, no argument about that. But not everybody disagreeing with something is subject to it.) I look at facts. That some teams, especially those deep into tribalism, do not look good when fact-checking is applied to their stances is not my fault, but it is an expected result. The deeper the tribalism, the flimsier the connection to reality. As a matter of fact, I do not even identify any "other team" or

              • Giving you the benefit of the doubt (I knee jerked at the gist of your single post) allow me to apologize for the insult.
      • Unfortunately, after Uvalde, we can expect the police to be very aggressive when it comes to these calls.

        We're past the Die Hard 1 days where a lone police car is dispatched to verify a hostage situation.

    • A service like this is what will finally de-escalate these crazy tactics I would think. When the call comes in, it should be assumed fake until proven otherwise. Now - that doesn't mean you shouldn't investigate, but it means you don't go breaking down doors and shooting people based on a phone call alone.

      It is a tough nut to crack - a lot of this is not the paramilitary tactics, but school threats, which put the places on lockdown or evacuated. But a computer generated voice should be a pause. But agree the crazier versions of swatting should go away. Just as this shows, it is way too simple to weaponize.

      There were a lot of Schools in PA that got threats during March - I haven't heard if it was this group of kooks or not. Probably.

      I wouldn't be terribly upset if they found the person and gave she/him a

      • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        Yeah but you kinda have to take threats seriously - look at the kid that shot their teacher in Newport News VA recently. An administrator had been notified the kid might have brought a gun but they did not take the threat seriously enough and search for it effectively. The outcome was a disaster.

        I think the reality is we need to fix this with a legalistic response. Making false reports, especially when you falsely assert a clear and present danger needs to carry very harsh penalties. The message to anyone

        • What happens when the threat actually originates from overseas? From a nation that does not have good diplomatic ties to the US?

          • by PPH ( 736903 ) on Friday April 14, 2023 @10:13AM (#63449410)

            What happens when the threat actually originates from overseas?

            You don't send the cops in response to overseas calls. In fact, you don't send them in response to any untracable calls. We were bullied into an E911 system that could provide the location of any cell phone. Land lines have been tied to physical locations for many decades. The only remaining piece of this puzzle is getting AT&T to scrap the insecure SS7 protocol and replace it with something secure. Screw their cut in the profits from untracable telemarketing and phone scams (which they seem to be able to trace in order to collect their fees).

            You want to Twitch or chat with your fellow gamers over insecure protocols? Fine. But we are under no obligation to provide you with a law enforcement response because you can't be bothered to make a plain old telephone call.

          • What happens when the threat actually originates from overseas? From a nation that does not have good diplomatic ties to the US?

            Then you tsk tsk tsk and wring your hands and chant "We are powerless to do anything about this. Completely impossible, there is no technology that can prevent this, and we are victims always."

            Actually, there is technology that can prevent this. Or can certainly be developed. We just seem to have a problem with money getting in the way.

        • Yeah but you kinda have to take threats seriously - look at the kid that shot their teacher in Newport News VA recently. An administrator had been notified the kid might have brought a gun but they did not take the threat seriously enough and search for it effectively. The outcome was a disaster.

          That one was the sort of disaster that makes me hope that the administrator in question needs to serve some time. Reading those reports show that the teacher did everything correctly, but it was completely ignored. Even the meeting with the parents told that they had 48 hours to get him psych help or they would call CPS was an inappropriate reaction. This wasn't one of the old "hmm, that might have been a clue." situations, this was a very clear threat.

          I hope the teacher completely recovers, and I hope sh

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

            Those messages are only received and followed by those who wouldn't be a threat anyway. Legality is the last ditch effort to deny reality.

            Not really, a group of people drinking sitting around and someone says somthing dumb like "hey you know what would be funny, we could call in a bomb threat", what happens when you have legalistic examples out there is someone else says "Joe don't do that, my cousins buddy is doing 25 years because of that shit, remember it was on the news last year!"

            Think about this - does any fool around at the airport when they ask - have your bags been your possession the entire time" etc? No for the most part they don't

      • Anecdotal, but just Monday (4/10), 12 schools around St. Louis had threats, all on the same day.

        https://www.kmov.com/2023/03/2... [kmov.com]

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday April 14, 2023 @09:19AM (#63449270) Homepage Journal

        AI generated voices mimicking family members are being used to scam people, so the chances of a random 911 operator being able to tell it's a machine are pretty low.

    • The story does not indicate what percentage of calls received are false.

      We already have stories of police not showing up in a timely manner because they're swamped with legitimate calls in major cities. Do they tell someone calling with an active shooter call, "Hey, we're get there in two to four hours, have a nice day"?

    • by Jamu ( 852752 ) on Friday April 14, 2023 @08:29AM (#63449166)
      If the call can't be traced, potentially or otherwise, it should not be accepted. The alternative is callers with practically no legal responsibility - and you're inviting fake calls. Anonymity, if it's required, and certainly not for fake calls, should be guaranteed by law and process for genuine callers.
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        "Press 1 if the call is real. Press 2 if the call is fake." *2* "Please state your SSN after the beep so we can trace you, thanks."

        The point is that you can't really discern whether the call is fake because the CID is fake, or whatever. It's an emergency call, therefore it's an emergency, therefore there's no time to squint and scrutinize. You can't even assume the call will be false because the CID is missing or something, because telcos occasionally fuck that up all by themselves. (I've seen that happen

        • by Zak3056 ( 69287 ) on Friday April 14, 2023 @12:06PM (#63449692) Journal

          The point is that you can't really discern whether the call is fake because the CID is fake, or whatever. It's an emergency call, therefore it's an emergency, therefore there's no time to squint and scrutinize.

          This presupposes you're dealing with that at the 911 call center. The correct way to deal with this is at the carrier level. I've run key systems/small PBX for years, and every carrier will cheerfully let me spoof my outgoing number... as long as the number in question is one of mine. If I try to use a number that isn't mine, guess what? The call gets dropped. The issue is when the call comes from another carrier, but that seems soluble. We can figure out who to bill for the call, but we can't figure out if the caller is legitimate? Please.

          Let's treat this like we treat domain/IP reputations with network traffic: If a network is misbehaving, we blackhole their traffic. Similarly, if a carrier is letting bad actors place calls across their networks and not policing that, then we blackhole their traffic until they fix their problem.

      • by thomn8r ( 635504 )

        If the call can't be traced, potentially or otherwise, it should not be accepted.

        My guess is the call can be "traced" but there's no way to verify it in the short amount of time available. Hell, I once got a telemarketing call that called-id showed was my own number.

        • by taustin ( 171655 )

          Tracing calls through various online services like Google Voice is nearly impossible if the caller knows what they're doing. Certainly so in any reasonable amount of time.

          Also you should go read up on the difference between CallerID and ANI. 911 doesn't use CallerID, which is trivial to fake. ANI controls billing, and phone companies are far more careful with that.

          • "Tracing calls through various online services like Google Voice is nearly impossible if the caller knows what they're doing."

            The telephone system is circuit switched, so you should at least be able to identify the next upstream party. So, make a call completion charge mandatory but you can pass it upstream if you can identify the upstream party. If it costs a telecom provider money to NOT be able to trace the call, it will quickly become feasible to do the trace.

        • by kackle ( 910159 )
          "The swatting is coming from within your house!!"
        • Why not call the caller back on the number supplied whilst still on the call, at the very least, a busy signal or voice mail should be expected, and easy enough to automate. Then tell the caller to answer the call if not busy, or a number capable of receiving multiple calls, answer the check call?

    • A service like this is what will finally de-escalate these crazy tactics I would think. When the call comes in, it should be assumed fake until proven otherwise. Now - that doesn't mean you shouldn't investigate, but it means you don't go breaking down doors and shooting people based on a phone call alone.

      I believe the opposite. As these calls increase they'll want to break in as quickly and effectively as possible to make effective use of their time. One missed real call is career ending for a lot of people, killing an innocent kid for the vaguest of reason isn't.

    • Exactly. I'm just surprised it took so long for someone to recognize this. Somehow outside of USA this sort of thing happens and people are far less likely to get killed as a result.

    • Seems like you're trying the approach of "there's a silver lining to every catastrophe", which is deflecting away from the original criminal and pointing blame to the police. The guy with swatting as a service is much worse than the police and should not be upgraded to some sort of disruptive hero.

    • "it means you don't go breaking down doors and shooting people based on a phone call alone"

      Why would the people who get to break down doors and shoot people want that?

  • It is like the boy who cried wolf. In most cases people would ignore these calls. But the Police cannot because if harm occurs they are held responsible. It is a tough situation where if this gets out of hand we could be paying a decent amount in taxes to deal with swatting.

    Luckily the amount is still rather low, but if it increases I do not know how this issue can be stopped. It may result in calls for some kind IP Tracking, something like blockchain, or everyone is assigned a set of IP (v6) Number(s)

    • VOIP tracking can help cut the robo calls as well.
      As well the fake IRS calls.

    • by thomn8r ( 635504 ) on Friday April 14, 2023 @09:48AM (#63449356)

      But the Police cannot because if harm occurs they are held responsible

      How cute. Cops have shot people when they've either gone to the wrong address or ginned up a fake probably cause on someone who turns up innocent, and have gotten away scot-free; what makes you think they would somehow be encumbered with these so-called "consequences" when responding - or not responding - to a fake call?

      • Human nature. Something always beats nothing. You can wriggle out of doing the wrong thing. People will say, "At least they tried." But if you do *nothing* when it turns out that something needed to be done, you'll get crucified.

    • It is like the boy who cried wolf. In most cases people would ignore these calls. But the Police cannot because if harm occurs they are held responsible. It is a tough situation where if this gets out of hand we could be paying a decent amount in taxes to deal with swatting.

      That would be institutionalizing the process.

      Stopping it from getting out of hand means each of the possible swatee's must be in possession of sufficiently effective weapons to repel the swators via the application of lethal force and be prepared to use them to "repel boarders by application of lethal force".

      When dealing with the sort of defectives who resort to force (the swators) they need to be repelled by applying lethal force to them before they get you.

      Unlike the endless stream of drivel on the idiot-box, do not stop killing them until they are dead. In almost all cases that 90 minute movie would be over in 2 minutes if the stupid victim has merely killed the attacker when the opportunity arose.

  • by huckamania ( 533052 ) on Friday April 14, 2023 @08:34AM (#63449182) Journal

    Can't access a website without https these days but idiot script kiddies and telemarketers can spoof any number in the world with impunity.

    What a crock. Someone needs to sue the phone companies that are allowing this to happen.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Even if the phone number looks fake, they are going to have to act on it. I mean come on, they can't just let all those guns and bullet proof vests sit around doing nothing, they have to get maximum tax payer value out of them.

      This problem would go away if the police were even mildly competent. There are reports of people getting swatted three times in a single day, and resorting to posting a notice for law enforcement on their door that was naturally ignored.

    • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Friday April 14, 2023 @09:17AM (#63449262)

      What a crock. Someone needs to sue the phone companies that are allowing this to happen.

      I have a better idea. How about we reign in the millitarised police who think that an insane disproportionate response is appropriate based on nothing more than a phone call.

      • by taustin ( 171655 )

        Or we could do that and prosecute swatting for what it is: attempted murder. A few very publicized cases with the perps getting 25 to life in a federal pen (with no parole) will cause the sociopaths to think twice over doing that to someone who kicked their ass in some meaningless computer game.

        They're both problems, and solving them isn't mutually exclusive.

        • Or we could do that and prosecute swatting for what it is: attempted murder.

          Nope. That's not the crime and the person would likely get off free. The issue is related to a gap in the law. You're neither murdering nor attempting to murder someone by getting someone else to do the work for you. This is gap was the reason for murder-for-hire statue, that people who request someone else do the killing weren't able to be punished. But quite critically for those statutes to apply you need to engage in commerce.

          At best if a person dies you may be charged with manslaughter, but unlike murde

          • by taustin ( 171655 )

            Nope. That's not the crime

            And yet, there have been prosecutions. With long prison sentences [businessinsider.com]. And that with a plea bargain that included dismissing state level charges in other states, though he still faced state level charges for the fake 911 calls.

            Making false 911 calls has been a crime for a long, long time, in all US jurisdictions. Doing so under those circumstances if generally a felony. Doing so across state lines is a federal felony.

            So enjoy whatever you're smoking loser, because you're full of shit.

        • by theCoder ( 23772 )

          Or we could do that and prosecute swatting for what it is: attempted murder.

          While I kind of agree based on the current outrageous state of policing in the US, in an ideal world calling the police should not reasonably be expected to result in someone's death, especially when there isn't any criminal activity going on at the location you pointed the police to. We need to start holding the police to a higher standard, not a lower one.

          But definitely prosecute the fraudsters for wasting everyone's time.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The real problem (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Friday April 14, 2023 @08:35AM (#63449184)

    Is of course a violent society where police is overly cowardly and fears for their life and hence far too often goes maximum force without any reasonable verification at all. You know how something like this plays out in most of Europe? Yes, the SWAT team may get alerted and put on standby, but first some regular police (who are available a lot faster) goes up to the site and tries to talk to people in order to find out what is going on. May also have something to do with police shooting people without very good reasons (and a swatting call does not qualify) having real consequences for them. That is why here, swatting is a nuisance but mostly not a real threat.

  • Is causing havoc across America. This is what happens when you instill a warrior mentality and the people who are just supposed to write speeding tickets.
    • So I'm curious: What -should be- the response to this problem? Or are you asserting that 'militarized police' is the ONLY CAUSE of swatting?

      • Militarized police are definitely a contributing factor to swatting. Studies have shown that police departments who receive e.g. 1033 program gear are more likely to have violent encounters with civilians, irrespective of local crime rates. https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]

        • I'm still not seeing the connection to swatting and preventing same. That's particularly true for non-local swatting. (I can kinda understand a connection where someone 'swats' just to watch the police response. But clearly that's not the situation with 'swatting for hire'. Here in NH, as well as Maine and I think also Mass, there's been a lot of school swatting originating out of the area.)

      • Swatting is a symptom of having trigger happy cops. https://slate.com/news-and-pol... [slate.com]

        Cops aren’t even in the top 10 list of dangerous jobs. Roofers and crab fishermen have it worse. In fact the number one killer of cops has been covid for a few years now. https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Hea... [go.com]

      • by Anonymous Coward

        The response should be a friendly local police officer goes to the location to talk calmly and quietly to the occupants. They scope out how serious the threat is and then call it in for the swat team if required, or in a lot of cases, just call in to say "nothing to see here, I've sorted it".

        The problem the militarised police face is that there are no friendly local police officers - they're all trigger happy nutjobs, possibly driving around in military surplus. So no one trusts that they could ever have a

    • Is causing havoc across America

      It seems to me that the recent police response to violent individuals in places like Germany and The Netherlands looked pretty militarized to me.

  • This feels more like an ad for the service than actual journalism. It seems from the article that there are only 2 examples of this service every being used but there are hundreds examples of SWATing. This service isn't novel, effective or a big deal. Stories like this are designed to shift the conversation from the issues that actually matter. Massive telecoms are entirely responsible for caller the ID spoofing that lets folks get away with this and poorly trained police departments are entirely respons
  • by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Friday April 14, 2023 @10:04AM (#63449396)
    The USA has cultivated this:
    • - Promote hyper-nationalist exceptionalism
    • - Value low knowledge but high confidence attitudes
    • - Promote political discourse and news based on feelings instead of facts
    • - Make guns so freely available that there are more guns than people
    • - Promote and subsidise TV and movies that legitimise and fetishise violence and guns; "Violence is the answer, now what seems to be the problem?"
    • - Have low to non-existent accountability for law enforcement officers
    • - Implement systemic high wealth inequality
    • - Allocate little to no resources to address mental health issues
    • - Constantly tell the population that they're under attack from one thing or another
    • - Constantly vilify democratic government and government taking responsibility for the welfare and safety of its people

    And people wonder why it's so easy to pit individuals and groups against each other in violent conflict? This is definitely a "USA problem."

    • by thomn8r ( 635504 ) on Friday April 14, 2023 @10:29AM (#63449460)

      The USA has cultivated this:

      You left out decades of copaganda to make this sort of policing seem normal

  • by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Friday April 14, 2023 @10:24AM (#63449440) Homepage

    The solution is actually simple: fix the police forces in the US.

    No police forces need military vehicles like MRAPs. No ordinary police officer needs any firearm beyond their service pistol (and often not even that).

    Any police officer with a firearm needs proper training. Rule 1: the police never shoot first. I don't care what they (think) they see: if someone hasn't shot at them first, they have no need to shoot. Period.

    Finally, most police forces do not need full-up SWAT teams. The teams that do exist need excellent training. Just as one example, imho, police should never be the aggressors. Even in something like a genuine hostage situation, the first tactic is to talk, not start busting doors and shooting people.

    "But police work is dangerous". It doesn't even make the top 25 [usatoday.com]

  • But let's not lose sight of the fact that this group and their offering have NO good use case, no matter how weasel-like you try to stretch the definition of "good".

    We should go Hammurabi-style on this one. Put them in the living room of a house in a city with a bad reputation for police excess, chain them discretely to the chair, put a piece of tape over their mouth, crazy-glue their hand to a mock AK that's fixed to the desktop and clearly visible, and then SWAT them.

    • by taustin ( 171655 )

      Rational people would prefer some application of the rule of law. Arrest, fair trail, very, very long prison sentence.

      That way, they suffer at least as much, and for a lot longer.

      • My post wasn't rational. It was reactionary, and deeply rooted in an almost biblical need for retribution.

        I embrace it, for the moment, and I will wallow in it until my normal reasonableness reasserts itself.

  • Every damn sentence mentions them by name, just like an advertisement. Or some dumb AI generated text.
  • You shouldn't be able to type someone's name in Google and get their location -- it's just too unsafe. It should be illegal to publicly publish or sell someone else's address (even if you're the government).
    • Go to the genealogy or reference section of the local library. Find a city directory of 100 years ago. You'll find addresses of all your neighbors, their names, names and ages of their kids, their occupation and salary.
      Now explain to me what happened in the intervening years and why.

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