YouTube, Discord, and Lord of the Rings Led Police To a Teen Accused of a US Swatting Spree (wired.com) 60
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A California teenager prosecutors say is responsible for hundreds of swatting attacks around the United States was exposed after law enforcement pieced together a digital trail left on some of the internet's largest platforms, according to court records released this week. Alan Winston Filion, a 17-year-old from Lancaster, California, faces four felony charges in Florida's Seminole County related to swatting, or fake threats called into the police to provoke a forceful response, according to Florida state prosecutors. Police arrested Filion on January 18, and he was extradited to Seminole County this week.
Filion's arrest, first reported by WIRED on January 26, marks the culmination of a multi-agency manhunt for the person police claim is responsible for swatting attacks on high schools, historically black colleges and universities, mosques, and federal agents, and for threats to bomb the Pentagon, members of the United States Senate, and the US Supreme Court. Ultimately, a YouTube channel, Discord chats, and usernames related to The Lord of the Rings helped lead authorities to Filion's doorstep.
Florida prosecutors charged Filion with four felony counts, including three related to allegedly making false reports to law enforcement and one for unlawful use of a two-way radio for "facilitating or furthering an act of terrorism" that authorities say targeted people based on race, religion, or other protected classes. While prosecutors alleged that Filion "is responsible for hundreds of swatting and bomb threat incidents throughout the United States," the charges Filion faces relate to a single May 12, 2023, swatting attack against the Masjid Al Hayy Mosque in Sanford, Florida. [...] At 2 pm EST on Wednesday, Filion shuffled into a Seminole County courtroom and stood quietly as the judge read the charges against him. He is currently being held without bond.
Filion's arrest, first reported by WIRED on January 26, marks the culmination of a multi-agency manhunt for the person police claim is responsible for swatting attacks on high schools, historically black colleges and universities, mosques, and federal agents, and for threats to bomb the Pentagon, members of the United States Senate, and the US Supreme Court. Ultimately, a YouTube channel, Discord chats, and usernames related to The Lord of the Rings helped lead authorities to Filion's doorstep.
Florida prosecutors charged Filion with four felony counts, including three related to allegedly making false reports to law enforcement and one for unlawful use of a two-way radio for "facilitating or furthering an act of terrorism" that authorities say targeted people based on race, religion, or other protected classes. While prosecutors alleged that Filion "is responsible for hundreds of swatting and bomb threat incidents throughout the United States," the charges Filion faces relate to a single May 12, 2023, swatting attack against the Masjid Al Hayy Mosque in Sanford, Florida. [...] At 2 pm EST on Wednesday, Filion shuffled into a Seminole County courtroom and stood quietly as the judge read the charges against him. He is currently being held without bond.
Try him as an adult (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Elephant in the room (Score:5, Informative)
Bullshit.
SWATing is not "sending the police to virtually any situation". It is calling in an [active shooter/shots fired/mad-bomber] emergency response required situation -falsely. The two are not remotely equivalent.
You are defending a reprehensible act in order to push your political agenda.
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They're not wrong though, even to a lot of those situations the tactical police response can seem excessive and people have been killed and hurt by storming police officers, what chances would most people here feel their dogs would have if swatted and officers charged into your house, mine would probably get shot not due to being an aggressive dog but he's protective and sounds real scary and strangers are attacking me in my home.
Yes they are there to protect lives but that doesn't come without cost and hon
Re:Elephant in the room (Score:4, Informative)
when actually faced with a worse situation they were woefully prepared.
A) that should be, woefully unprepared and B) they were cowards [newsweek.com].
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The problem isn't the amount of training (Score:3, Interesting)
And if this was a late 70s / early 80s action flick it would be. But in the real world soldiers are trained to kill and "warrior cop" training makes cops think everyone's out to get them because if you're a soldier in a warzone everyone probably is out to get you.
We need less cops, more social workers. But
Re:The problem isn't the amount of training (Score:4, Insightful)
1. a peaceful country where the cops are slow to violence and deal with the population patiently. Or.
2. A country swimming in guns, and a culture that encourage every schizophrenic 17 year old boy with daddy issues to “exercise his man card” on the nearest grade school. And we make sure every one of them has an AR-15 with bump stocks, extended magazines, and plenty of hollow point ammo. All in the name of “maintaining a well regulated militia”. And the cops will respond accordingly with hair-trigger violence when dealing with citizens. Can you blame them? Every florida man, his wife, and his grandma walk around with a glock in one hand and a smith and wesson in the other. And both are loaded.
We can’t have it both ways, and we went with option 2. My own opinion on the matter is irrelevant. I’m not judging. This issue has been litigated to death, up to the supreme court, a dozen times. This is how we live. We chose this. We WANT this. As a consequence, the police are gonna be hair-trigger with their guns. And there will ALWAYS be a new generation of 17 year old idiots who think that swatting is fun. As soon as one generation grows up and gets wiser, they will get replaced by a bunch of fresh 17 year olds with biologically-programmed poor judgement.
In other words, this problem is NOT going away.
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All in the name of “maintaining a well-regulated militia”.
I think therein lies the solution. The 2nd Amendment has two parts:
a) People should be free to bear arms;
b) So that they're effective members of a well-regulated militia.
Why defend only "a", but not "b"? Enforce "b"! Have a permanent, universal draft in the US, as is done in other countries. 1 to 3 years of mandatory army service when one turns 16 or 18 years old, including obligatory extensive firearms training and infantry tactics. This way everyone will be a full part of the well-regulated militia, makin
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Pretty much, yes. That's law, not logic. Though presumably laws should be logical, they need not be. Hence, if a law states a goal and a means to achieve that goal, both the goal and the means are linked, whether that link makes sense (as it does for guns case) or not (in your analogy with books).
Therefore, if the legislators wanted the right to bear arms to be an absolute freedom, they wouldn't have stated as a goal the upkeep of a well-regulated militia, they'd simply have stated the right by itself, as a
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We canâ(TM)t have it both ways, and we went with option 2.
Option 1 and Option 2 together wouldn't create such a critical mass if millions of children weren't constantly being born into systemic poverty that they have a 1 in a million chance of breaking out of.
Children nowadays can no longer look forward to ever owning their own home even if their parents had money. 'Had' because of the Medical Industrial Complex.
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"This drug thing, this ain't police work. No, it ain't. I mean, I can send any fool with a badge and a gun up on them corners and jack a crew and grab vials. But policing? I mean, you call something a war and pretty soon everybody gonna be running around acting like warriors. They gonna be running around on a damn crusade, storming corners, slapping on cuffs, racking up body counts. And when you at war, you need a fucking enemy. And pretty soon, damn near everybody on every corner is your fucking enemy. And [youtube.com]
I'm aware of that (Score:1)
They sent cops. The kid is dead.
That's why I said any situation.
It should be the opposite. I should be able to call police and be 100% sure they're not going to kill innocents. Hell, I should be pretty sure they won't kill non-innocents, with the amount of training and weapons and tools they have.
The moral of the story is, don't call the cops unless
Re: Elephant in the room (Score:2)
It is calling in an [active shooter/shots fired/mad-bomber] emergency response required situation -falsely. The two are not remotely equivalent.
They both have a high probability of making a situation worse. Does sending the government in ever make things better?
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Get gunned down in a hail of cop bullets?
Oh, no, wait. That's the second thing you would do.
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That's because he's part of a yuge Antifa plot to overthrow society by making it seem like he's a regular guy. Don't forget, we have that false flag from Pennsylvania [mediamatters.org] who didn't really kill his father, but instead caused a distraction so they could infiltrate the Orange god's [imgur.com] trial as part of the deep state conspiracy [rawstory.com] to bring down this country by having Taylor Swift, who's being funded by the Pentagon [forbes.com], spread witchraft and satanism [screengeek.net] via her music.
Got all that [sciencealert.com]?
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If he wasn’t elected he rules nothing. The world will be a good place when the last priest is strangled by the entrails of the last prince.
Re: I'm confused (Score:1)
He made you and me. He rules us, and no amount of priest-strangling or prince-eviscerating will change that.
He's not going to do well in prison (Score:4, Funny)
Pudge boy with the girlie hair is going to be very popular. I do not support prison rape as a form of extrajudicial punishment but the fact remains that's where this dumbass is headed.
His lawyer better argue for isolation ward or protected area, not gen pop.
Re:He's not going to do well in prison (Score:4)
Pudge boy with the girlie hair is going to be very popular. I do not support prison rape as a form of extrajudicial punishment but the fact remains that's where this dumbass is headed.
His lawyer better argue for isolation ward or protected area, not gen pop.
He was targeting blacks, Muslims & cops; he'll have both lots of enemies & lots of friends in prison
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Pudge boy with the girlie hair is going to be very popular. I do not support prison rape as a form of extrajudicial punishment but the fact remains that's where this dumbass is headed.
His lawyer better argue for isolation ward or protected area, not gen pop.
He was targeting blacks, Muslims & cops; he'll have both lots of enemies & lots of friends in prison
He'll be put into Protective Custody (not sure what the US calls it) rather than the general population. That's where they put people too weak to survive general and people who's crimes will get them killed in short order (mostly peados or child killers, criminals have a weird code of ethics, you could be the most sadistic, murderous MFer as long as you didn't do it to kids). For the most part it'll be the elderly though.
Am I the only one here who thinks it's fucked up (Score:3)
I mean the subtext of what you're writing is that you're expecting him to be raped and beaten. But I somehow doubt that you would be willing to have that done in a state sanctioned and official capacity.
And as the saying goes you can judge the quality of a society by how it treats the least among it...
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I do expect him to be beaten and raped.
And to state it even more clearly than I did before, no I do not want that to happen to him or anyone in prison. It's wrong and unacceptable.
The law does not have "beaten and raped" as an official punishment on the books in any state. Extrajudicial punishment is never ok.
I'm for law and order. Not law, order, and prison rape.
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It wouldn't be hard at all to stop the beatings in the rapes you would just have to staff the prisons more. Also throw up some cameras. Of course if we had camera footage we'd also have footage of the poorly paid and under trained prison guards beating prisoners to and that's a lawsuit..
Ultimate
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Oh really? You don't know shit about me except that I mock your lazy demand for a commie style free ride.
My standard of ethics and morals is way fucking higher than yours; I do not demand to stick my hand into others' wallet to have a better lifestyle without working my ass off for it. I do have a much better lifestyle than you and I did work way fucking harder than you for my entire life. Right up until early retirement. Keep your sticky fingers out of my wallet. Work harder if you want more stuff, sl
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Big Brother, where are you? (Score:1)
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Re:Big Brother, where are you? (Score:4, Insightful)
It could prove that the cops are incompetent. But it could also prove that your paranoid assumptions about all encompassing pervasive surveillance is just wrong.
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Caller ID and Google (Score:1)
Why is caller id so full of holes kids can fake numbers, and why isn't this fixed yet?
I even read a thread that he was using google voice to fake caller id.
Everyone talks about harsher laws, but never about fixing the telecom networks that seems to be full of security holes.
People need to stop blaming the cops (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason we see the violent response to many of these calls is that a lot of PDs have actually trained their people that situations like Columbine and the VA Tech shooting are 100% unacceptable behavior for the police. There is no in between. You do not knock and announce when an active shooter or hostage situation with a guy who is clearly willing to hurt the hostages is called in. You surprise with overwhelming force to the best of your ability.
The way A LOT of people talk about use of force is embarrassingly ignorant. A lot of these people also genuinely don't get why cops are trained to aim for center of mass, not arms or legs. It's just a total embarrassment for a republican polity that so many people can participate in government and yet be as useless at understanding force as a panda in captivity is at understanding sex.
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The reason we see the violent response to many of these calls is that a lot of PDs have actually trained their people that situations like Columbine and the VA Tech shooting are 100% unacceptable behavior for the police.
Your theories sound interesting; however, the Uvalde response gives the lie to your theories.
But how? (Score:2)
I'm less interested in how they got him than I am in finding out how he was able to determine the home addresses of all the swattees.
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Um, never heard about how everything tracks you and sells the data? For example, say I want an address of someone:
"Infutor is a leader in consumer identity management and resolution. Its National Spatial Reference File, is the largest and most comprehensive database of addresses and geographic coordinates in the US."
They charge 0.5 cents per record.