9 ms·

School shooting hoaxes have terrorized kids across U.S.

60 points by anjel 3y ago

anjel 3y ago
VOIP services linked to a wave of hard-to-trace school swattings. https://archive.ph/QChlP https://archive.ph/QChlP
legitster 3y ago
We had 3 different notices in the last week from our school of social media threats. They have not divulged a lot of details, but I have gleaned two things. * A lot of these are anonymous threats where the school is not identified, so multiple districts are being put on alert at a time * The police department is using a new software tool that scrapes social media for threats. Which could explain the sudden increase in threats.
- GenerocUsername 3y ago
  That's wild. So now everyone is more scared, is there any evidence they are safer though?
bdw5204 3y ago
According to the article, whoever is behind this is using some web site that lets anybody with an email address spoof a US phone number to send fraudulent messages. The phone system badly needs to be upgraded so that people can't make calls or send text messages from somebody else's phone number. Doing that would not only stop the shady service that people are using to send these hoaxes to schools but would also stop the spam calls that come from people with the same first 6 digits as your number. There aren't really legitimate use cases for phone number spoofing and even hiding your number so it shows up as unknown on caller ID is a good way to ensure the person you're calling won't answer the phone. When somebody makes a phone call, you should be able to trust that the caller ID shows the actual phone number that is calling you.
- codezero 3y ago
  There are absolutely legitimate use cases for phone number spoofing, especially for businesses (many locations but single contact number as an identifier), but that doesn’t mean it can’t be made a lot more resilient to bad actors.
  - robinsonb5 3y ago
    Restricting spoofing so that you have to own the spoofed number should cover the legitimate use cases, I think?
    - codezero 3y ago
      Yep!
  - thereddaikon 3y ago
    This is a mostly solved problem when it comes to the internet. We've figured out how to legitimately have an arbitrary number of computers appear as one single domain online and do so in a way that can be trusted. The issue with phones is a case of outdated technology and infrastructure.
    - giantg2 3y ago
      Exactly, phone systems can easily have an internal system and an external number. Very similar to internal vs external IPs. Nobody needs to care about internal numbers/IPs, but registering the external is beneficial. Treating phone numbers like IPs or even better domains could work.
- gustavus 3y ago
  > There aren't really legitimate use cases for phone number spoofing Very valid reason, I want to sign up for an internet account somewhere, Google, Facebook, etc and not have it be traced back directly to me because I value my privacy. If you're argument is that I shouldn't need to do that, well then you're just arguing against privacy in that case.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
medellin 3y ago
When i was in grade school some 20 years ago now we had the same issue but it was bomb threats back then.
- gs17 3y ago
  Same, we even had one where IIRC it was just that someone wrote "the bomb goes off at 3:00" in a bathroom an unknown number of days before they noticed. I think they made us turn in handwriting samples.
  - sixothree 3y ago
    The gall of that, especially at a time when all you did all day every day is turn in handwriting samples.
    - giantg2 3y ago
      You would think they'd want the prior samples so the attacker doesn't change their writing for the sample. Or perhaps they could more easily identify it by comparing the samples to the prior samples and looking for who is disguising their style?
- estebank 3y ago
  The thing that I don't get is that when I was growing up on Argentina, I never saw anything like that. We heard about the shootings and bomb threats in the US, but once a teacher got stabbed in an Argentinean school and was national news. And that was the biggest event in years. Why do these kind of things only seem to be prevalent on one country? Gun prevalence explains the medium of choise these past 25 years, and one thing that needs to be tackled, but there seems to be other factors at play as well.
  - tivert 3y ago
    > Gun prevalence explains the medium of choise these past 25 years, and one thing that needs to be tackled, but there seems to be other factors at play as well. People blame guns exclusively, but I think the real causes are: 1. Some kind of societal dysfunction that's leading deeper levels of anger and isolation in some people. 2. Massive national advertising campaigns by the media reminding angry, isolated teenagers that shooting up their school is an option they have.
civilitty 3y ago
> Following a query from The Post, Instagram removed the accounts for violating its policy against inciting violence, said a spokeswoman for Meta, which operates Instagram and Facebook. Am I reading this right - that the Post interfered in an on going investigation by reaching out to Instagram about the accounts? I assume if the FBI wanted the accounts closed they would have reached out to Instagram themselves, they were already issuing subpoenas to Google et al. The bans could have clued in the perpetrator to the extent of the investigation.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  Instagram might be large enough of an organization that it can both cooperate with law enforcement investigators and handle press inquiries from journalists. And if they weren't large enough, hopefully their legal team is competent enough to direct the employs to attend to law enforcement first, everyone else second.
gustavus 3y ago
The article is interesting and informative, it also points to why we are seeing the death of the open internet, and of the anonymous internet. > Over the past year, more than 500 schools in the United States have been subjected to a coordinated campaign of fear that exploits the all-too-real American danger of school shootings, according to a review of media reports and dozens of public records requests. The Washington Post examined police reports, emergency call recordings, body-camera footage or call logs in connection with incidents in 24 states. It also puts a hole in the fact that any of this surveillance is "to protect the children" as I'm sure the NSA has enough info to track this guy down but just don't.
- Swizec 3y ago
  > American danger of school shootings “nothing we can do says only nation where this regularly happens”. sigh.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  The NSA doesn’t perform domestic intelligence. Even in a conspiratorial world where they do: operating outside of their legal mandate would mean that they wouldn't involve themselves with things like this.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    Replace NSA with US government.
    - woodruffw 3y ago
      That’s an entirely different sentence: specifying the NSA puts the claim into the territory of conspiracy, while specifying domestic federal LEO is essentially a question of capacity, reach, and competency. (Moreover, I don’t think anybody wants to live in a world where the FBI is 100% accurate in detecting school shooting hoaxes. That would imply other abilities that we’d consider unacceptable.)
  - jameshart 3y ago
fatnoah 3y ago
Earlier this year, my child got to experience this. An anonymous tip led to a lockdown and police investigating an area of the school. During that investigation, one of the officers accidentally discharged their weapon. That, of course led to numerous calls to 911 about shots fired and a full-on response. The first I heard about any of this was getting a call from my child, who was running to the woods to hide.
- resonious 3y ago
  An officer accidentally fired a gun? Is it just me or is that something that just should not happen?
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    No accidents should happen, obviously. But put poorly trained people in the most terrifying moment of their lives with a dangerous weapon in their hands, and you better believe there are going to be some accidents. Thus: the whole problem. Some unarmed kid running for their life down the halls is gonna get shot by a police officer sooner or later.
  - jabroni_salad 3y ago
    Yes, it's very simple. If you do not wish to shoot the gun, do not put your finger on the trigger. Firearm safety really is that straightforward, which is why it's so stupid when stuff like that happens.
    - hedora 3y ago
      /s? The NRA used to be mostly focused on gun safety, and not lobbying for gun manufacturers in DC. Their courses were much more involved than "don't pull trigger if you don't want to shoot". Other pieces of advice included "keep the safety on", "never aim at a person" and "always assume the gun is loaded, especially when cleaning it".
      - giantg2 3y ago
sp332 3y ago
Drills are awful too. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/active-shooter-drills-are-meant-prepare-students-research-finds-severe-n1239103 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/active-shooter-drills-a...
tivert 3y ago
[flagged]
- coupdejarnac 3y ago
  In China, there are mass knife killings at schools, and the news gets censored. So, no, your police state fantasy isn't a panacea.
  - maest 3y ago
    Interesting. Do you have any stats or sources?
    - coupdejarnac 3y ago
      Search "china school knife killings". https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/10/china/guangdong-lianjiang-kindergarten-attack-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/10/china/guangdong-lianjiang-kin...
- coolhand2120 3y ago
  Is this sarcasm?
mrchucklepants 3y ago
This happened earlier this year to the HS where I had two kids attending. The first minutes before they figured out it was a hoax were terrifying.
bannedbybros 3y ago
[dead]
woodruffw 3y ago
I’m in my mid-late 20s, and went to entirely public schools. My partner is a few years younger than me, also went to public schools, and the difference in our experiences consistently surprises me: while school shootings were a concern while I was in school, I never experienced a hoax. Meanwhile, she experienced multiple hoaxes each year in high school. More generally, my (slightly) younger friends have independently described having nightmares over school shootings. It makes me very sad to think that generations of young adults have those kinds of associations with our educational system.
francisofascii 3y ago
It is not just the hoaxes that scare kids and even the teachers, it is also the random shelter in place alerts. We had an incident at my neighborhood school where a guy on drugs drove into a school parking lot. This generating alerts and announcements in the school. One teacher starting barricading her classroom door.
- giantg2 3y ago
  I agree. I think it's mostly the overreactions that drive even more hysteria and fear. We had lockdowns due to a vehicle theft on the property, due to random drug sweeps, being inside with the blinds closed due to a sniper, etc. Nobody panicked or talked about nightmares, just as nobody did when taking precautions for things like fires with fire drills. They need to be providing context if these drills and hoaxes are causing these sorts of issues. Like here is the statistical likelihood of this happening to you vs that, at school vs at home, etc.
goodbyesf 3y ago
[flagged]
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
> “Nine times out of 10, it’s a TextNow number,” Mack said. > she moved on to Google and Apple, asking for everything they had on the email addresses that created the TextNow accounts. > The logs revealed hundreds of calls over a roughly two-week period, many to police departments, schools and even restaurants.
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
sacnoradhq 3y ago
Contemplating the risks and vulnerability this produces is itself part of the terror. It's possible state-level actors could use public safety hoaxes to cripple an economy in the short-term with panics and interruption of events and in the long-term by preventing published in-person meetings of people for any purpose, including education. Domestic criminal mischief, by teens or adults, scaled by technical means could also accomplish the same ends. Perhaps police departments and education institutions will need to filter emergency comms to require origination from a STIR/SHAKEN-valid source.

60 points by anjel 3y ago

VOIP services linked to a wave of hard-to-trace school swattings. https://archive.ph/QChlP https://archive.ph/QChlP

We had 3 different notices in the last week from our school of social media threats. They have not divulged a lot of details, but I have gleaned two things. * A lot of these are anonymous threats where the school is not identified, so multiple districts are being put on alert at a time * The police department is using a new software tool that scrapes social media for threats. Which could explain the sudden increase in threats.

GenerocUsername 3y ago
That's wild. So now everyone is more scared, is there any evidence they are safer though?

bdw5204 3y ago

According to the article, whoever is behind this is using some web site that lets anybody with an email address spoof a US phone number to send fraudulent messages. The phone system badly needs to be upgraded so that people can't make calls or send text messages from somebody else's phone number. Doing that would not only stop the shady service that people are using to send these hoaxes to schools but would also stop the spam calls that come from people with the same first 6 digits as your number. There aren't really legitimate use cases for phone number spoofing and even hiding your number so it shows up as unknown on caller ID is a good way to ensure the person you're calling won't answer the phone. When somebody makes a phone call, you should be able to trust that the caller ID shows the actual phone number that is calling you.

codezero 3y ago
There are absolutely legitimate use cases for phone number spoofing, especially for businesses (many locations but single contact number as an identifier), but that doesn’t mean it can’t be made a lot more resilient to bad actors.
- robinsonb5 3y ago
  Restricting spoofing so that you have to own the spoofed number should cover the legitimate use cases, I think?
  - codezero 3y ago
    Yep!
- thereddaikon 3y ago
  This is a mostly solved problem when it comes to the internet. We've figured out how to legitimately have an arbitrary number of computers appear as one single domain online and do so in a way that can be trusted. The issue with phones is a case of outdated technology and infrastructure.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    Exactly, phone systems can easily have an internal system and an external number. Very similar to internal vs external IPs. Nobody needs to care about internal numbers/IPs, but registering the external is beneficial. Treating phone numbers like IPs or even better domains could work.
gustavus 3y ago
> There aren't really legitimate use cases for phone number spoofing Very valid reason, I want to sign up for an internet account somewhere, Google, Facebook, etc and not have it be traced back directly to me because I value my privacy. If you're argument is that I shouldn't need to do that, well then you're just arguing against privacy in that case.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

medellin 3y ago

When i was in grade school some 20 years ago now we had the same issue but it was bomb threats back then.

gs17 3y ago
Same, we even had one where IIRC it was just that someone wrote "the bomb goes off at 3:00" in a bathroom an unknown number of days before they noticed. I think they made us turn in handwriting samples.
- sixothree 3y ago
  The gall of that, especially at a time when all you did all day every day is turn in handwriting samples.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    You would think they'd want the prior samples so the attacker doesn't change their writing for the sample. Or perhaps they could more easily identify it by comparing the samples to the prior samples and looking for who is disguising their style?
estebank 3y ago
The thing that I don't get is that when I was growing up on Argentina, I never saw anything like that. We heard about the shootings and bomb threats in the US, but once a teacher got stabbed in an Argentinean school and was national news. And that was the biggest event in years. Why do these kind of things only seem to be prevalent on one country? Gun prevalence explains the medium of choise these past 25 years, and one thing that needs to be tackled, but there seems to be other factors at play as well.
- tivert 3y ago
  > Gun prevalence explains the medium of choise these past 25 years, and one thing that needs to be tackled, but there seems to be other factors at play as well. People blame guns exclusively, but I think the real causes are: 1. Some kind of societal dysfunction that's leading deeper levels of anger and isolation in some people. 2. Massive national advertising campaigns by the media reminding angry, isolated teenagers that shooting up their school is an option they have.

civilitty 3y ago

> Following a query from The Post, Instagram removed the accounts for violating its policy against inciting violence, said a spokeswoman for Meta, which operates Instagram and Facebook. Am I reading this right - that the Post interfered in an on going investigation by reaching out to Instagram about the accounts? I assume if the FBI wanted the accounts closed they would have reached out to Instagram themselves, they were already issuing subpoenas to Google et al. The bans could have clued in the perpetrator to the extent of the investigation.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
Instagram might be large enough of an organization that it can both cooperate with law enforcement investigators and handle press inquiries from journalists. And if they weren't large enough, hopefully their legal team is competent enough to direct the employs to attend to law enforcement first, everyone else second.

gustavus 3y ago

The article is interesting and informative, it also points to why we are seeing the death of the open internet, and of the anonymous internet. > Over the past year, more than 500 schools in the United States have been subjected to a coordinated campaign of fear that exploits the all-too-real American danger of school shootings, according to a review of media reports and dozens of public records requests. The Washington Post examined police reports, emergency call recordings, body-camera footage or call logs in connection with incidents in 24 states. It also puts a hole in the fact that any of this surveillance is "to protect the children" as I'm sure the NSA has enough info to track this guy down but just don't.

Swizec 3y ago
> American danger of school shootings “nothing we can do says only nation where this regularly happens”. sigh.
woodruffw 3y ago
The NSA doesn’t perform domestic intelligence. Even in a conspiratorial world where they do: operating outside of their legal mandate would mean that they wouldn't involve themselves with things like this.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Replace NSA with US government.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    That’s an entirely different sentence: specifying the NSA puts the claim into the territory of conspiracy, while specifying domestic federal LEO is essentially a question of capacity, reach, and competency. (Moreover, I don’t think anybody wants to live in a world where the FBI is 100% accurate in detecting school shooting hoaxes. That would imply other abilities that we’d consider unacceptable.)
- jameshart 3y ago

fatnoah 3y ago

Earlier this year, my child got to experience this. An anonymous tip led to a lockdown and police investigating an area of the school. During that investigation, one of the officers accidentally discharged their weapon. That, of course led to numerous calls to 911 about shots fired and a full-on response. The first I heard about any of this was getting a call from my child, who was running to the woods to hide.

resonious 3y ago
An officer accidentally fired a gun? Is it just me or is that something that just should not happen?
- ethanbond 3y ago
  No accidents should happen, obviously. But put poorly trained people in the most terrifying moment of their lives with a dangerous weapon in their hands, and you better believe there are going to be some accidents. Thus: the whole problem. Some unarmed kid running for their life down the halls is gonna get shot by a police officer sooner or later.
- jabroni_salad 3y ago
  Yes, it's very simple. If you do not wish to shoot the gun, do not put your finger on the trigger. Firearm safety really is that straightforward, which is why it's so stupid when stuff like that happens.
  - hedora 3y ago
    /s? The NRA used to be mostly focused on gun safety, and not lobbying for gun manufacturers in DC. Their courses were much more involved than "don't pull trigger if you don't want to shoot". Other pieces of advice included "keep the safety on", "never aim at a person" and "always assume the gun is loaded, especially when cleaning it".
    - giantg2 3y ago

sp332 3y ago

Drills are awful too. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/active-shooter-drills-are-meant-prepare-students-research-finds-severe-n1239103 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/active-shooter-drills-a...

tivert 3y ago

[flagged]

coupdejarnac 3y ago
In China, there are mass knife killings at schools, and the news gets censored. So, no, your police state fantasy isn't a panacea.
- maest 3y ago
  Interesting. Do you have any stats or sources?
  - coupdejarnac 3y ago
    Search "china school knife killings". https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/10/china/guangdong-lianjiang-kindergarten-attack-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/10/china/guangdong-lianjiang-kin...
coolhand2120 3y ago
Is this sarcasm?

mrchucklepants 3y ago

This happened earlier this year to the HS where I had two kids attending. The first minutes before they figured out it was a hoax were terrifying.

bannedbybros 3y ago

[dead]

woodruffw 3y ago

I’m in my mid-late 20s, and went to entirely public schools. My partner is a few years younger than me, also went to public schools, and the difference in our experiences consistently surprises me: while school shootings were a concern while I was in school, I never experienced a hoax. Meanwhile, she experienced multiple hoaxes each year in high school. More generally, my (slightly) younger friends have independently described having nightmares over school shootings. It makes me very sad to think that generations of young adults have those kinds of associations with our educational system.

francisofascii 3y ago

It is not just the hoaxes that scare kids and even the teachers, it is also the random shelter in place alerts. We had an incident at my neighborhood school where a guy on drugs drove into a school parking lot. This generating alerts and announcements in the school. One teacher starting barricading her classroom door.

giantg2 3y ago
I agree. I think it's mostly the overreactions that drive even more hysteria and fear. We had lockdowns due to a vehicle theft on the property, due to random drug sweeps, being inside with the blinds closed due to a sniper, etc. Nobody panicked or talked about nightmares, just as nobody did when taking precautions for things like fires with fire drills. They need to be providing context if these drills and hoaxes are causing these sorts of issues. Like here is the statistical likelihood of this happening to you vs that, at school vs at home, etc.

goodbyesf 3y ago

[flagged]

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

> “Nine times out of 10, it’s a TextNow number,” Mack said. > she moved on to Google and Apple, asking for everything they had on the email addresses that created the TextNow accounts. > The logs revealed hundreds of calls over a roughly two-week period, many to police departments, schools and even restaurants.

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

sacnoradhq 3y ago

Contemplating the risks and vulnerability this produces is itself part of the terror. It's possible state-level actors could use public safety hoaxes to cripple an economy in the short-term with panics and interruption of events and in the long-term by preventing published in-person meetings of people for any purpose, including education. Domestic criminal mischief, by teens or adults, scaled by technical means could also accomplish the same ends. Perhaps police departments and education institutions will need to filter emergency comms to require origination from a STIR/SHAKEN-valid source.