10 ms·

Serial swatter who caused death gets five years in prison

128 points by parsecs 5y ago

alsetmusic 5y ago
Coincidentally, the latest episode of Darknet Diaries tells the story of a similar victim.[0] Again, the goal was to capture their Instagram username. Similar antics employed. Fortunately, it doesn’t end in tragedy. [0] https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/97/ https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/97/
- mark_h 5y ago
  I came looking to see if anyone had posted this. The thing that got to me about that episode was the complete lack of empathy (mild spoiler, I suppose) shown at the end, which is probably also more than evident in the OP's tragic conclusion.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
viggity 5y ago
It isn't nearly enough time, he'll be out in 2 years. He fucking killed someone and he's walking away with a slap on the wrist. Fuck that guy.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  > Judge Norris said he was giving Sonderman the maximum sentenced allowed by law under the statute — 60 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release, but implied that his sentence would be far harsher if the law permitted. So, it seems like statute requires updating to increase the maximum sentence permitted for such crimes. Another question is: would that dissuade these attacks by these actors? I'm unsure. Call your representative(s). While the American justice system leaves much to be desired, I don't think more time for effectively ordering a hit through social engineering is excessively punitive. Ross Ulbricht of Silk Road fame is doing far more time, in part, for paying someone to perform a hit that didn't take place (it was a factor in affirming his life sentence) [1] [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Trial [2] https://www.wired.com/2017/05/silk-road-creator-ross-ulbricht-loses-life-sentence-appeal/ https://www.wired.com/2017/05/silk-road-creator-ross-ulbrich...
  - alasdair_ 5y ago
    > Ross Ulbricht of Silk Road fame is doing far more time just for attempting to pay someone to perform a hit. I’m fairly sure those charges were dropped and did not come up at trial.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - tptacek 5y ago
      No, they definitely did. They were an explicit predicate to the conspiracy charge.
  - IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
    Paying a killer is obvious proof of intend. We consider intentional acts to be far worse than unintended consequences. Say you’re on your way to pay the murder-for-hire when you accidentally run over your intended victim while checking HN on your phone. You admit to everything. Which part should contribute more to your prison sentence?
- echelon 5y ago
  > It isn't nearly enough time, he'll be out in 2 years. He fucking killed someone and he's walking away with a slap on the wrist. Fuck that guy. You're being downvoted. I cannot fathom the kind of thought process it takes to downvote you for this statement. This was a heinous crime that should have been prosecuted as first degree murder.
  - eli 5y ago
    It's factually incorrect that he'll be out in 2 years.
    - echelon 5y ago
      That's a nitpick. Even five years is a pittance for taking someone's life. In this manner. After attempting to steal from them and harass them. And after showing a history of this kind of abuse directed at other human beings.
      - eli 5y ago
        I agree, but it's getting downvoted because it's wrong.
  - eropple 5y ago
    I downvoted that post because it's just not correct: federal sentences have not been eligible for parole since 1987 and good-behavior releases are rarely if ever that significant of a reduction. I also downvoted it because ill-informed hauteur doesn't vibe--I mean, if you are going to be outraged, and there are many things (many of which go uncommented-upon here!) to be outraged about, a substantial point that furthers a discussion is pretty important. I downvoted your post because complaining about downvotes is frowned upon here. (I've done it. I got downvoted for it. It's how it goes.)
  - sigstoat 5y ago
    > This was a heinous crime that should have been prosecuted as first degree murder. this thinking lets people escape convictions that would've been a sure thing if they were prosecuted for second degree. "first degree" doesn't just mean "we punish them more", there are specific requirements for it. and if the facts don't fit the requirements, the defense will explain that _very_ _clearly_ to the jury and you'll have a difficult time getting a conviction. juries are not as excited about handing out first degree murder convictions as you might think.
- krebsonsecurity 5y ago
  There's no probation in the federal system. He will serve the 60 months.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
  While I despise these very online losers taking their failure at life out on everyone happier or more successful than them, and especially those they believe to deserve less status than them, It just doesn’t follow that deserve to be punished at the levels murders tend to get. Even though there have been a few cases such as this, the victim’s death is just too rare to assume that that as the intended outcome. A swat raid on an innocent person should, in any civilized society, never end with death. For vast swaths of the democratic world, that’s also our experience, proofing that it’s not impossible. It’s a negligent homicide, and I would place a significant chunk of the guilt on the police. Punishing them so,klar to, say, drunk drivers that kill someone seems about right. And two years in prison aren’t a “slap on the wrist”.
  - didibus 5y ago
    It's much more than a negligent act, this is active intentful criminal activity. If you're going to put people in jail for selling weed, but do nothing to someone performing continuous online harassment such as release of private information on public channels, false reports of child abuse, swatting, sending false deliveries to their home, bad mouthing them to their friends, stealing of their online accounts through sim swapping, and all that, well dammit something is definitely wrong. And the harassment in this case isn't even trolling or a grudge between two people, this is harassment for ransom of property and valuable assets from the target, in this case, valuable Twitter handles.
- walkedaway 5y ago
  Agreed. Should be same punishment as a murder for hire. Didn't pull the trigger, but the intent from the swatter was there. Let's please make an example of these lowlifes that think abusing public safety resources is an acceptable way to "get" people they disagree with.
echelon 5y ago
That's not an appropriate punishment. This should have been first degree murder. There was intention to create risk of injury or death. Also, there were other crimes committed that should have increased the severity of the crime. 1) This was an attempt to rob the victim of the "@tennessee" Twitter handle. 2) The perpetrator has done this before. 3) This was a false police report that put not only the victim, but also the police force in danger. It also reduced the ability of the police to respond to actual emergencies. Totally underwhelming punishment.
- fallingknife 5y ago
  I agree he should have got more, but murder 1 requires intent to kill.
  - HarryHirsch 5y ago
    Then we need to fix the penal code. Recklessness for human life isn't adequately punished, which is why swattings won't stop, and why drunk drivers are permitted to continue killing people.
    - dahfizz 5y ago
      > drunk drivers are permitted to continue killing people. Driving drunk, and killing people, are both illegal. What is being permitted, exactly?
      - HarryHirsch 5y ago
        The punishment for drunk driving in US is piddling, because, you know, lack of intent.
        prophesi 5y ago
        In Cali, there's what they call a "Watson Murder" wherein someone with a previous DUI or "implied malice" will be hit with essentially a second degree murder charge. That said, I do think punitive acts against drunk driving may not change much so long as it's much more cheap/convenient to drive yourself instead of using public transit/rideshares/carpooling. There's also the issue of binge drinking being so commonplace in the States.
wnevets 5y ago
I know everyone wants to be upset at the "swatter" but few people seem to be upset that it is even possible. It shouldn't be possible to be murdered from a phone call.
- eropple 5y ago
  "It's possible" because a functional society requires trust in the case of extremity and extreme situations are difficult to adequately plan for, difficult to test, and once set in their ways difficult to change for next time due to significant institutional inertia. (Which, before one starts, is not evil, it is inevitable, and part of management and problem-solving is understanding this.) You can certainly be concerned about the procedures followed and whether they are wise or followed correctly. And should they be looked at and changed? Probably! Almost certainly! But somehow I doubt that the people who you are low-key castigating for their reaction towards the person breaking that societal trust are forgetting this. Most people are, after all, able to care about more than one thing at once. But the proximate cause is that broken trust, and that the safety measures have not succeeded does not reduce the magnitude of that broken trust. That breaking of that trust is primarily alarming to people is not a particularly humane reason to adjust one's pince-nez and hrm at them.
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    We have door locks and passwords because you cannot blindly trust people. My bank asks for ID when opening an account because (in addition to KYC) it's not just going to trust me, a random customer. When I get pulled over, the cops ask for my license--they aren't just going to accept "I have a license. Trust me, bro". Imagine if everything worked on the honor system! Society would fall apart within hours. Trust-by-default just makes you vulnerable to being exploited by bad actors. It's pretty scary that an unauthenticated, anonymous phone call from an unknown location is enough to cause an armed police response. Do a little investigation first to try to corroborate the claim before treating it seriously!
    - xd 5y ago
      "Do a little investigation first to try to corroborate the claim before treating it seriously!" If the police don't act swiftly enough and harm was to come to anyone they'd be criticised for not taking it seriously. Police can't win either way. If you were the person in need would you want an immediate response or a little investigation first?
sebmellen 5y ago
So evil, and for such a trifling thing. What a shame. > Other victims of the group told prosecutors their tormentors further harassed them by making false reports of child abuse to social services local to the target’s area, and false reports in the target’s name to local suicide prevention hotlines. > Eventually, when subjects of their harassment refused to sell or give up their Twitter and Instagram usernames, Sonderman and others would swat their targets — or make a false report to authorities in the target’s name with the intention of sending a heavily armed police response to that person’s address.
Hokusai 5y ago
Does Swatting exist in any other country that is not the USA? Because I see two problems here, one is the criminal that make the calls, the other is what it seems a severely lack of training of the Swat teams.
- trangus_1985 5y ago
  Yes, but a big contributing factor is that the police in the US have a militarized wing, even in small towns. SWAT teams probably only need to exist in large cities, and even then, should rarely be utilized.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    I don't see how this is a solution. I agree rarely should be utilized, but they certainly should be utilized if someone is being held hostage in their home or something like that. This is what SWATters capitalize on.
    - wpietri 5y ago
      The problem is that people are only good at things that they do regularly (and often not even then). There are a lot of stories out there of terrible SWAT incidents or SWAT being deployed to to situations where it isn't warranted. Building up a militarized unit in a place that doesn't have much call for it creates a tendency to unnecessary use of force. Chekov's gunmen, basically.
      - whimsicalism 5y ago
        So, because police aren't practiced at responding often to hostage incidents - they should just not send anyone at all? Ultimately, you're going to have to have people deal with hostage situations, heavily armed organized crime, etc.
        wpietri 5y ago
        Not at all. If your interpretation of somebody's words yields nonsense, you should probably try for another interpretation.
dragontamer 5y ago
It seems like the crime at play here was Doxxing. The one who actually made the Swatting-call was some unnamed minor from the UK.
- m3kw9 5y ago
  He was the main lead, doxxing was one of his works leading to more. The trigger man in this case was a minor
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  At least according to the article, the crime in question was conspiring to swat him. Nothing particularly new here. That's generally how you convict people who get other people to do their dirty work.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    There's a fair number of people complaining about the law setting him at 60-months in prison. Well, the __solution__ is to talk about how we should rewrite the law. To rewrite the law, we should first understand this case entirely. This is just one man in an entire conspiracy group who seemed to seek profits from conducting ransom attacks. If you don't pay a ransom, you'll be doxxed and somebody out there will probably SWAT you for fun. There's levels of indirection here, as if they're trying to minimize the hit they'll take as they go to jail. And it seems largely successful. So the next step is to start making proposals for how the law should be written (and then to get those drafts to the lawmakers). This is a non-political issue that won't really get stuck. I'm simply trying to start the political process and law crafting needed to fix this problem in the future. Is the problem on Discord for having unsupervised meetup spots where these kinds of conspiracies can grow? How do people join groups like this? Is there a way we can get the Police to attack these groups before further incidents come out? Etc. etc.
satellite2 5y ago
Edit: deleted Reacted before getting the facts right, my bad
- titzer 5y ago
  Read the article. The police did not kill the man. He died of a heart attack after he dropped the weapon. Not that police don't kill plenty of other innocent people in all kinds of fuckups, but please get the facts right.
dang 5y ago
Recent and related: Man dies of a heart attack after minors swatted him over his rare Twitter handle - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27900825 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27900825 - July 2021 (523 comments)
contrarian_5 5y ago
it makes me think about bullying. the definition of a bully is someone who uses words to cause a physical response in your body, a sympathetic stress response, in a way that doesnt upset anyone else or trigger a correction from the law or the people around. a bully can reach out and touch you, mess around with your sympathetic nervous system and never break any rules -- thats why bullying is so sinister. we have a culture that says words cant hurt you but i dont think thats true. this is an example where nobody did anything. it was just a simple phone call and the swat team never touched this guy. hypothetically no cultural or legal lines were crossed except lying to the police. someone died and they didnt even lock this guy up. they just let him out. we need to have laws and cultural rules that take into account that words can have a huge impact on your body and cause you real physical harm. thats what the science says about stress. and we also need to take into account that the world is now fully connected and hosting a very large pool of hardcore psychopaths who will happily kill people or ruin them if they can get away with it. we have a culture that is ignoring all these issues. every website out there is super pushy about 2FA via sms when it is intrinsically flawed as is demonstrated time and fucking time again with these sim swaps. it could be very easily avoided either by reform of the phone companies or a dozen other ways. and swatting shouldnt be possible either because simply knocking on the door, calling ahead or any number of things would abort 99% of these cases. this is not an intrinsic aspect of this modern technological society. it is just a bunch of idiotic oversights for the most part.
uses 5y ago
Darknet Diaries' latest episode covers this exact same scenario. It includes the story of someone getting harassed by cybercriminals through SIM attacks, pizza deliveries, threatening relatives, threatening SWATing, and other evil behavior. https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/97/ https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/97/
lovetocode 5y ago
The problem is the militarization of the American police force. I have been on countless raids in both Iraq and Afghanistan and very rarely did we ever do “no-knock” type raids. Most of the time we just surround the compound, throw a banger in the front lawn and ask for the occupants to exit the building. Most of the time they did. So if “no-knock” raids weren’t the status quo in a war zone than it shouldn’t be the standard in American suburbs. This isn’t Fallujah…
- sebmellen 5y ago
  In this case the man left his house with a firearm and the police did not shoot him — he had a heart attack. The harassment in this case was not just SWAT-ing, but also ordering pizzas, harassing relatives, etc. Unfortunately, harsh sentencing and tougher enforcement/legal action against the perpetrators is probably the only way to stop the issue.
  - volta83 5y ago
    The police asked a fat old man to jump over a fence, and the. To crawl under it. The police job is always descalation. After reading that story, it doesn’t feel like they de escalated anything.
- ryathal 5y ago
  There is a minor defense that a lot of evidence police care about can be destroyed using this method as opposed to no knock raids, the army isn't concerned with jury trials. I don't think that's a good justification for 99% of no knock raids anyway though.
- volta83 5y ago
  There is probably a big difference between the type of training and procedures between the police in the US and the US army. I don’t support militarization of the police, but the problem here is “poorly executed militarization”. In Switzerland, anyone with sufficient training and mental capabilities can keep a gun at home. In the US, any psycho without training can have a gun. The problem isn’t the guns, but rather guns in the hands of idiots. Same here with militarization of the police. We’re they to receive the same training as the US army, and abide by the same rules, they’ll probably do significantly less harm than what they do now.

128 points by parsecs 5y ago

Coincidentally, the latest episode of Darknet Diaries tells the story of a similar victim.[0] Again, the goal was to capture their Instagram username. Similar antics employed. Fortunately, it doesn’t end in tragedy. [0] https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/97/ https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/97/

mark_h 5y ago
I came looking to see if anyone had posted this. The thing that got to me about that episode was the complete lack of empathy (mild spoiler, I suppose) shown at the end, which is probably also more than evident in the OP's tragic conclusion.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

viggity 5y ago

It isn't nearly enough time, he'll be out in 2 years. He fucking killed someone and he's walking away with a slap on the wrist. Fuck that guy.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
> Judge Norris said he was giving Sonderman the maximum sentenced allowed by law under the statute — 60 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release, but implied that his sentence would be far harsher if the law permitted. So, it seems like statute requires updating to increase the maximum sentence permitted for such crimes. Another question is: would that dissuade these attacks by these actors? I'm unsure. Call your representative(s). While the American justice system leaves much to be desired, I don't think more time for effectively ordering a hit through social engineering is excessively punitive. Ross Ulbricht of Silk Road fame is doing far more time, in part, for paying someone to perform a hit that didn't take place (it was a factor in affirming his life sentence) [1] [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Trial [2] https://www.wired.com/2017/05/silk-road-creator-ross-ulbricht-loses-life-sentence-appeal/ https://www.wired.com/2017/05/silk-road-creator-ross-ulbrich...
- alasdair_ 5y ago
  > Ross Ulbricht of Silk Road fame is doing far more time just for attempting to pay someone to perform a hit. I’m fairly sure those charges were dropped and did not come up at trial.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - tptacek 5y ago
    No, they definitely did. They were an explicit predicate to the conspiracy charge.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
  Paying a killer is obvious proof of intend. We consider intentional acts to be far worse than unintended consequences. Say you’re on your way to pay the murder-for-hire when you accidentally run over your intended victim while checking HN on your phone. You admit to everything. Which part should contribute more to your prison sentence?
echelon 5y ago
> It isn't nearly enough time, he'll be out in 2 years. He fucking killed someone and he's walking away with a slap on the wrist. Fuck that guy. You're being downvoted. I cannot fathom the kind of thought process it takes to downvote you for this statement. This was a heinous crime that should have been prosecuted as first degree murder.
- eli 5y ago
  It's factually incorrect that he'll be out in 2 years.
  - echelon 5y ago
    That's a nitpick. Even five years is a pittance for taking someone's life. In this manner. After attempting to steal from them and harass them. And after showing a history of this kind of abuse directed at other human beings.
    - eli 5y ago
      I agree, but it's getting downvoted because it's wrong.
- eropple 5y ago
  I downvoted that post because it's just not correct: federal sentences have not been eligible for parole since 1987 and good-behavior releases are rarely if ever that significant of a reduction. I also downvoted it because ill-informed hauteur doesn't vibe--I mean, if you are going to be outraged, and there are many things (many of which go uncommented-upon here!) to be outraged about, a substantial point that furthers a discussion is pretty important. I downvoted your post because complaining about downvotes is frowned upon here. (I've done it. I got downvoted for it. It's how it goes.)
- sigstoat 5y ago
  > This was a heinous crime that should have been prosecuted as first degree murder. this thinking lets people escape convictions that would've been a sure thing if they were prosecuted for second degree. "first degree" doesn't just mean "we punish them more", there are specific requirements for it. and if the facts don't fit the requirements, the defense will explain that _very_ _clearly_ to the jury and you'll have a difficult time getting a conviction. juries are not as excited about handing out first degree murder convictions as you might think.
krebsonsecurity 5y ago
There's no probation in the federal system. He will serve the 60 months.
IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
While I despise these very online losers taking their failure at life out on everyone happier or more successful than them, and especially those they believe to deserve less status than them, It just doesn’t follow that deserve to be punished at the levels murders tend to get. Even though there have been a few cases such as this, the victim’s death is just too rare to assume that that as the intended outcome. A swat raid on an innocent person should, in any civilized society, never end with death. For vast swaths of the democratic world, that’s also our experience, proofing that it’s not impossible. It’s a negligent homicide, and I would place a significant chunk of the guilt on the police. Punishing them so,klar to, say, drunk drivers that kill someone seems about right. And two years in prison aren’t a “slap on the wrist”.
- didibus 5y ago
  It's much more than a negligent act, this is active intentful criminal activity. If you're going to put people in jail for selling weed, but do nothing to someone performing continuous online harassment such as release of private information on public channels, false reports of child abuse, swatting, sending false deliveries to their home, bad mouthing them to their friends, stealing of their online accounts through sim swapping, and all that, well dammit something is definitely wrong. And the harassment in this case isn't even trolling or a grudge between two people, this is harassment for ransom of property and valuable assets from the target, in this case, valuable Twitter handles.
walkedaway 5y ago
Agreed. Should be same punishment as a murder for hire. Didn't pull the trigger, but the intent from the swatter was there. Let's please make an example of these lowlifes that think abusing public safety resources is an acceptable way to "get" people they disagree with.

echelon 5y ago

That's not an appropriate punishment. This should have been first degree murder. There was intention to create risk of injury or death. Also, there were other crimes committed that should have increased the severity of the crime. 1) This was an attempt to rob the victim of the "@tennessee" Twitter handle. 2) The perpetrator has done this before. 3) This was a false police report that put not only the victim, but also the police force in danger. It also reduced the ability of the police to respond to actual emergencies. Totally underwhelming punishment.

fallingknife 5y ago
I agree he should have got more, but murder 1 requires intent to kill.
- HarryHirsch 5y ago
  Then we need to fix the penal code. Recklessness for human life isn't adequately punished, which is why swattings won't stop, and why drunk drivers are permitted to continue killing people.
  - dahfizz 5y ago
    > drunk drivers are permitted to continue killing people. Driving drunk, and killing people, are both illegal. What is being permitted, exactly?
    - HarryHirsch 5y ago
      The punishment for drunk driving in US is piddling, because, you know, lack of intent.
      - prophesi 5y ago
        In Cali, there's what they call a "Watson Murder" wherein someone with a previous DUI or "implied malice" will be hit with essentially a second degree murder charge. That said, I do think punitive acts against drunk driving may not change much so long as it's much more cheap/convenient to drive yourself instead of using public transit/rideshares/carpooling. There's also the issue of binge drinking being so commonplace in the States.

wnevets 5y ago

I know everyone wants to be upset at the "swatter" but few people seem to be upset that it is even possible. It shouldn't be possible to be murdered from a phone call.

eropple 5y ago
"It's possible" because a functional society requires trust in the case of extremity and extreme situations are difficult to adequately plan for, difficult to test, and once set in their ways difficult to change for next time due to significant institutional inertia. (Which, before one starts, is not evil, it is inevitable, and part of management and problem-solving is understanding this.) You can certainly be concerned about the procedures followed and whether they are wise or followed correctly. And should they be looked at and changed? Probably! Almost certainly! But somehow I doubt that the people who you are low-key castigating for their reaction towards the person breaking that societal trust are forgetting this. Most people are, after all, able to care about more than one thing at once. But the proximate cause is that broken trust, and that the safety measures have not succeeded does not reduce the magnitude of that broken trust. That breaking of that trust is primarily alarming to people is not a particularly humane reason to adjust one's pince-nez and hrm at them.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  We have door locks and passwords because you cannot blindly trust people. My bank asks for ID when opening an account because (in addition to KYC) it's not just going to trust me, a random customer. When I get pulled over, the cops ask for my license--they aren't just going to accept "I have a license. Trust me, bro". Imagine if everything worked on the honor system! Society would fall apart within hours. Trust-by-default just makes you vulnerable to being exploited by bad actors. It's pretty scary that an unauthenticated, anonymous phone call from an unknown location is enough to cause an armed police response. Do a little investigation first to try to corroborate the claim before treating it seriously!
  - xd 5y ago
    "Do a little investigation first to try to corroborate the claim before treating it seriously!" If the police don't act swiftly enough and harm was to come to anyone they'd be criticised for not taking it seriously. Police can't win either way. If you were the person in need would you want an immediate response or a little investigation first?

sebmellen 5y ago

So evil, and for such a trifling thing. What a shame. > Other victims of the group told prosecutors their tormentors further harassed them by making false reports of child abuse to social services local to the target’s area, and false reports in the target’s name to local suicide prevention hotlines. > Eventually, when subjects of their harassment refused to sell or give up their Twitter and Instagram usernames, Sonderman and others would swat their targets — or make a false report to authorities in the target’s name with the intention of sending a heavily armed police response to that person’s address.

Hokusai 5y ago

Does Swatting exist in any other country that is not the USA? Because I see two problems here, one is the criminal that make the calls, the other is what it seems a severely lack of training of the Swat teams.

trangus_1985 5y ago
Yes, but a big contributing factor is that the police in the US have a militarized wing, even in small towns. SWAT teams probably only need to exist in large cities, and even then, should rarely be utilized.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  I don't see how this is a solution. I agree rarely should be utilized, but they certainly should be utilized if someone is being held hostage in their home or something like that. This is what SWATters capitalize on.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    The problem is that people are only good at things that they do regularly (and often not even then). There are a lot of stories out there of terrible SWAT incidents or SWAT being deployed to to situations where it isn't warranted. Building up a militarized unit in a place that doesn't have much call for it creates a tendency to unnecessary use of force. Chekov's gunmen, basically.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      So, because police aren't practiced at responding often to hostage incidents - they should just not send anyone at all? Ultimately, you're going to have to have people deal with hostage situations, heavily armed organized crime, etc.
      - wpietri 5y ago
        Not at all. If your interpretation of somebody's words yields nonsense, you should probably try for another interpretation.

dragontamer 5y ago

It seems like the crime at play here was Doxxing. The one who actually made the Swatting-call was some unnamed minor from the UK.

m3kw9 5y ago
He was the main lead, doxxing was one of his works leading to more. The trigger man in this case was a minor
mumblemumble 5y ago
At least according to the article, the crime in question was conspiring to swat him. Nothing particularly new here. That's generally how you convict people who get other people to do their dirty work.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  There's a fair number of people complaining about the law setting him at 60-months in prison. Well, the __solution__ is to talk about how we should rewrite the law. To rewrite the law, we should first understand this case entirely. This is just one man in an entire conspiracy group who seemed to seek profits from conducting ransom attacks. If you don't pay a ransom, you'll be doxxed and somebody out there will probably SWAT you for fun. There's levels of indirection here, as if they're trying to minimize the hit they'll take as they go to jail. And it seems largely successful. So the next step is to start making proposals for how the law should be written (and then to get those drafts to the lawmakers). This is a non-political issue that won't really get stuck. I'm simply trying to start the political process and law crafting needed to fix this problem in the future. Is the problem on Discord for having unsupervised meetup spots where these kinds of conspiracies can grow? How do people join groups like this? Is there a way we can get the Police to attack these groups before further incidents come out? Etc. etc.

satellite2 5y ago

Edit: deleted Reacted before getting the facts right, my bad

titzer 5y ago
Read the article. The police did not kill the man. He died of a heart attack after he dropped the weapon. Not that police don't kill plenty of other innocent people in all kinds of fuckups, but please get the facts right.

dang 5y ago

Recent and related: Man dies of a heart attack after minors swatted him over his rare Twitter handle - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27900825 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27900825 - July 2021 (523 comments)

contrarian_5 5y ago

it makes me think about bullying. the definition of a bully is someone who uses words to cause a physical response in your body, a sympathetic stress response, in a way that doesnt upset anyone else or trigger a correction from the law or the people around. a bully can reach out and touch you, mess around with your sympathetic nervous system and never break any rules -- thats why bullying is so sinister. we have a culture that says words cant hurt you but i dont think thats true. this is an example where nobody did anything. it was just a simple phone call and the swat team never touched this guy. hypothetically no cultural or legal lines were crossed except lying to the police. someone died and they didnt even lock this guy up. they just let him out. we need to have laws and cultural rules that take into account that words can have a huge impact on your body and cause you real physical harm. thats what the science says about stress. and we also need to take into account that the world is now fully connected and hosting a very large pool of hardcore psychopaths who will happily kill people or ruin them if they can get away with it. we have a culture that is ignoring all these issues. every website out there is super pushy about 2FA via sms when it is intrinsically flawed as is demonstrated time and fucking time again with these sim swaps. it could be very easily avoided either by reform of the phone companies or a dozen other ways. and swatting shouldnt be possible either because simply knocking on the door, calling ahead or any number of things would abort 99% of these cases. this is not an intrinsic aspect of this modern technological society. it is just a bunch of idiotic oversights for the most part.

uses 5y ago

Darknet Diaries' latest episode covers this exact same scenario. It includes the story of someone getting harassed by cybercriminals through SIM attacks, pizza deliveries, threatening relatives, threatening SWATing, and other evil behavior. https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/97/ https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/97/

lovetocode 5y ago

The problem is the militarization of the American police force. I have been on countless raids in both Iraq and Afghanistan and very rarely did we ever do “no-knock” type raids. Most of the time we just surround the compound, throw a banger in the front lawn and ask for the occupants to exit the building. Most of the time they did. So if “no-knock” raids weren’t the status quo in a war zone than it shouldn’t be the standard in American suburbs. This isn’t Fallujah…

sebmellen 5y ago
In this case the man left his house with a firearm and the police did not shoot him — he had a heart attack. The harassment in this case was not just SWAT-ing, but also ordering pizzas, harassing relatives, etc. Unfortunately, harsh sentencing and tougher enforcement/legal action against the perpetrators is probably the only way to stop the issue.
- volta83 5y ago
  The police asked a fat old man to jump over a fence, and the. To crawl under it. The police job is always descalation. After reading that story, it doesn’t feel like they de escalated anything.
ryathal 5y ago
There is a minor defense that a lot of evidence police care about can be destroyed using this method as opposed to no knock raids, the army isn't concerned with jury trials. I don't think that's a good justification for 99% of no knock raids anyway though.
volta83 5y ago
There is probably a big difference between the type of training and procedures between the police in the US and the US army. I don’t support militarization of the police, but the problem here is “poorly executed militarization”. In Switzerland, anyone with sufficient training and mental capabilities can keep a gun at home. In the US, any psycho without training can have a gun. The problem isn’t the guns, but rather guns in the hands of idiots. Same here with militarization of the police. We’re they to receive the same training as the US army, and abide by the same rules, they’ll probably do significantly less harm than what they do now.