7 ms·

Surely the robust solution is for police/swat teams to treat unverified threats differently? Any real world system needs to be able to handle faulty inputs. If

Surely the robust solution is for police/swat teams to treat unverified threats differently? Any real world system needs to be able to handle faulty inputs. If this particular system wasn't so terrible at that, bad actors would have no reason to make the false reports in the first place.

oh_sigh 8y ago
What happens when an unverified threat isn't considered quick enough, and the hostages are killed while the police are standing around outside taking a wait and see approach?
- ClassyJacket 8y ago
  The fact that this only happens in America indicates that their approach is the wrong one. They could ask any other developed nation for advice.
  - scythe 8y ago
    Kirtaner, the owner of 420chan, was infamously swatted by g0shawk some years ago. He lives in Canada (and g0shawk is in Australia).
  - oh_sigh 8y ago
    Hostages are only taken by crazy people in America? I doubt that.
    - Hamuko 8y ago
      He's saying that swatting only happens in America. Which is pretty much the case.
      - oh_sigh 8y ago
        Do other countries even have SWAT teams?
        dragonwriter 8y ago
        Other countries usually have police tactical response teams and/or separate paramilitary police forces to which high threat situations are escalated. The details, of course, differ considerably from country to country.
    - ben-schaaf 8y ago
      Of course not. It's just in other first world countries a regular police officer shows up first to assess any credible threat before further action is taken for a single anonymous call.
- ksdale 8y ago
  I feel like occasions where the police react too slowly and hostages get killed would make it into the news. Instead we have stories about swatting. Any policy needs to weigh the harm to actual hostages against the harm to victims of swatting and right now it seems like swatting victims are bearing the brunt of police action. It is just my hunch that Hollywood has made us believe that crazy dangerous hostage situations happen far more often than they actually do and in reality, pranks are much more common.
  - esoterica 8y ago
    That's a very silly thing to believe. Real hostage situations happen all the time, you just never noticed because "angry drunk waves gun around while wife and kids cower in the corner" is not exactly national news.
    - ksdale 8y ago
      I appreciate this perspective, I definitely hadn’t considered all of the ways a hostage situation can arise. A very quick Googling turned up an article that said that 85-90% of hostage situations are resolved nonviolently. Another article said that police in the US receive something like 100,000,000 non-emergency calls (including pranks calls) in a year, so we’re probably talking at least tens of thousands of prank calls (not just swatting though, obviously). Based on admittedly sensational news stories, violence seems to happen more often when people get swatted than it should and it doesn’t seem silly to think that overreacting to elaborate prank calls isn’t capable of causing harm that’s greater than the harm caused by underreacting to real calls.
  - oh_sigh 8y ago
    Swatting is a much more sensational story, even more so than a real SWAT-necessary situation. Odds are you have no ability to judge the relative frequency of pranks vs real swat calls, because only the pranks and extremely high profile real ones are reported on national news.
  - trhway 8y ago
    >I feel like occasions where the police react too slowly and hostages get killed would make it into the news. Here you go https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/03/15/parkland-surveillance-video-shows-officer-standing-outside-school-during-shooting/428147002 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/03/15/pa... I'm pretty sure that an experienced police easily recognizes when it is a serious dangerous stuff like the above, and when it is just a safe, for police, swatting where you can just go in with all guns blazing.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  "What happens when an unverified threat isn't considered quick enough, and the hostages are killed while the police are standing around outside taking a wait and see approach? " When has this ever happened outside of movies?
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  Has that happened, often? This feels like the "We have to be allowed to torture terror suspects, because what if there's a bomb set to go off in an hour and the suspect won't reveal its location unless we torture him" argument. This kind of policy needs to be based on history, not hypotheticals.
jrochkind1 8y ago
How do you think they are going to verify a threat? By showing up, right? I'm not sure "verified" vs "unverified" is the important thing. I do think U.S. police's approach in general is far too violent and it makes these things more dangerous. That also means that anyone 'swatting' ought to know they are doing something dangerous and with high potential for violence, far from just a joke, it's an extremely immoral act.
- fenomas 8y ago
  > How do you think they are going to verify a threat? By showing up, right? I don't follow your implication - obviously nobody's suggesting the police not show up. The point is that swat teams should treat anonymous calls as potential crimes - and potential pranks or mistakes - until they have reason not to. Systems need to be robust against bad inputs! If a system occasionally kills people when lied to, the solution is not to try and prevent people from lying to it - it's to improve the system.
  - jrochkind1 8y ago
    Yes, the system needs to be improved, the way that police respond with indiscriminate violence as a first resort puts people in danger in many situations beyond these, and needs to be changed. But I feel like some in this thread are calling for leniancy for 'swatters', perhaps because they've done it themselves or are friends with those who have. "the solution is not to try and prevent people from lying to it." No, it's that too. The police ARE a dangerous murderous gang, as long as that is true tricking them into responding to someone on false pretenses is a violent act, with potentially deadly consequences, a grossly immoral act. If anyone thinks they can escape moral culpability for swatting because it's the police's fault -- even making that argument is explicitly recognizing that the police are a dangerous violent force, so if you sic them on someone you know what you are doing, you know the potential consequences. If you let your dangerous dog loose on purpose and it attacks someone, it's your fault and the dogs fault too. You have responsibility for your actions. Intentionally exposing someone to potential police violence is on the person who does it, even if the police ought not to be so easy to be used in that way, that person still used them in that way. And it's a horribly unethical thing to do.

oh_sigh 8y ago

What happens when an unverified threat isn't considered quick enough, and the hostages are killed while the police are standing around outside taking a wait and see approach?

ClassyJacket 8y ago
The fact that this only happens in America indicates that their approach is the wrong one. They could ask any other developed nation for advice.
- scythe 8y ago
  Kirtaner, the owner of 420chan, was infamously swatted by g0shawk some years ago. He lives in Canada (and g0shawk is in Australia).
- oh_sigh 8y ago
  Hostages are only taken by crazy people in America? I doubt that.
  - Hamuko 8y ago
    He's saying that swatting only happens in America. Which is pretty much the case.
    - oh_sigh 8y ago
      Do other countries even have SWAT teams?
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        Other countries usually have police tactical response teams and/or separate paramilitary police forces to which high threat situations are escalated. The details, of course, differ considerably from country to country.
  - ben-schaaf 8y ago
    Of course not. It's just in other first world countries a regular police officer shows up first to assess any credible threat before further action is taken for a single anonymous call.
ksdale 8y ago
I feel like occasions where the police react too slowly and hostages get killed would make it into the news. Instead we have stories about swatting. Any policy needs to weigh the harm to actual hostages against the harm to victims of swatting and right now it seems like swatting victims are bearing the brunt of police action. It is just my hunch that Hollywood has made us believe that crazy dangerous hostage situations happen far more often than they actually do and in reality, pranks are much more common.
- esoterica 8y ago
  That's a very silly thing to believe. Real hostage situations happen all the time, you just never noticed because "angry drunk waves gun around while wife and kids cower in the corner" is not exactly national news.
  - ksdale 8y ago
    I appreciate this perspective, I definitely hadn’t considered all of the ways a hostage situation can arise. A very quick Googling turned up an article that said that 85-90% of hostage situations are resolved nonviolently. Another article said that police in the US receive something like 100,000,000 non-emergency calls (including pranks calls) in a year, so we’re probably talking at least tens of thousands of prank calls (not just swatting though, obviously). Based on admittedly sensational news stories, violence seems to happen more often when people get swatted than it should and it doesn’t seem silly to think that overreacting to elaborate prank calls isn’t capable of causing harm that’s greater than the harm caused by underreacting to real calls.
- oh_sigh 8y ago
  Swatting is a much more sensational story, even more so than a real SWAT-necessary situation. Odds are you have no ability to judge the relative frequency of pranks vs real swat calls, because only the pranks and extremely high profile real ones are reported on national news.
- trhway 8y ago
  >I feel like occasions where the police react too slowly and hostages get killed would make it into the news. Here you go https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/03/15/parkland-surveillance-video-shows-officer-standing-outside-school-during-shooting/428147002 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/03/15/pa... I'm pretty sure that an experienced police easily recognizes when it is a serious dangerous stuff like the above, and when it is just a safe, for police, swatting where you can just go in with all guns blazing.
maxxxxx 8y ago
"What happens when an unverified threat isn't considered quick enough, and the hostages are killed while the police are standing around outside taking a wait and see approach? " When has this ever happened outside of movies?
PhasmaFelis 8y ago
Has that happened, often? This feels like the "We have to be allowed to torture terror suspects, because what if there's a bomb set to go off in an hour and the suspect won't reveal its location unless we torture him" argument. This kind of policy needs to be based on history, not hypotheticals.

jrochkind1 8y ago

How do you think they are going to verify a threat? By showing up, right? I'm not sure "verified" vs "unverified" is the important thing. I do think U.S. police's approach in general is far too violent and it makes these things more dangerous. That also means that anyone 'swatting' ought to know they are doing something dangerous and with high potential for violence, far from just a joke, it's an extremely immoral act.

fenomas 8y ago
> How do you think they are going to verify a threat? By showing up, right? I don't follow your implication - obviously nobody's suggesting the police not show up. The point is that swat teams should treat anonymous calls as potential crimes - and potential pranks or mistakes - until they have reason not to. Systems need to be robust against bad inputs! If a system occasionally kills people when lied to, the solution is not to try and prevent people from lying to it - it's to improve the system.
- jrochkind1 8y ago
  Yes, the system needs to be improved, the way that police respond with indiscriminate violence as a first resort puts people in danger in many situations beyond these, and needs to be changed. But I feel like some in this thread are calling for leniancy for 'swatters', perhaps because they've done it themselves or are friends with those who have. "the solution is not to try and prevent people from lying to it." No, it's that too. The police ARE a dangerous murderous gang, as long as that is true tricking them into responding to someone on false pretenses is a violent act, with potentially deadly consequences, a grossly immoral act. If anyone thinks they can escape moral culpability for swatting because it's the police's fault -- even making that argument is explicitly recognizing that the police are a dangerous violent force, so if you sic them on someone you know what you are doing, you know the potential consequences. If you let your dangerous dog loose on purpose and it attacks someone, it's your fault and the dogs fault too. You have responsibility for your actions. Intentionally exposing someone to potential police violence is on the person who does it, even if the police ought not to be so easy to be used in that way, that person still used them in that way. And it's a horribly unethical thing to do.