10 ms·

Forgive my ignorance, but can the police not get the identity of the people calling these in from the phone companies? Swatting would be over very quickly if we

Forgive my ignorance, but can the police not get the identity of the people calling these in from the phone companies? Swatting would be over very quickly if we just started handing out 5 year prison sentences to every moron who tries this.

infamouscow 2y ago
Are the police going to verify their identity? How are you going to verify that someone is not also committing identity theft?
- babypuncher 2y ago
  Well you just so happen to have a complete recording in their voice where they committed the crime. If they called 911 using a voice modulator then the call should have been ignored in the first place.
  - infamouscow 2y ago
    Two questions: 1. How the hell do you plan to tell the difference between some prankster using voice modulation and a genuine caller stuck in a situation with weird acoustics? Or are you too dense to realize that emergencies don't always happen in perfect sound conditions? 2. Are you seriously okay with giving police dispatchers godlike powers to decide if your desperate plea for help is "real enough" for them? And if they get it wrong and write you off as a scammer while you're bleeding out, I guess that's just tough luck, huh? Still feeling smug about your brilliant plan now?
qayxc 2y ago
It's not only difficult to verify the identity from phone companies or ISPs (worst case you'd need a court order), depending on the nature of the report and the situation, it might also be straight up dangerous for the caller. Besides, it's pretty damn simple to just a stolen phone or compromised computer to do this sort of thing. If you really were to get the identity this way, you now likely have two victims instead of one...
- babypuncher 2y ago
  "This phone number was used to make a fraudulent 911 call, here is the recording" should more than enough to secure a warrant. You have a complete recording of the phone call, so you can verify if the person speaking in it was the owner of the phone number. If it's not a match, then you can start investigating friends and family of the owner who would have had access to the phone. If police can't figure out how to do this basic shit then why are we trusting them with SWAT gear?
cge 2y ago
The police apparently chose to do this based on an emailed tip, not a phone call. If the attacker was the least bit competent there will be no way to uncover their identity at all. Even NSA-level traffic and timing analysis would not necessarily be effective against a well-constructed anonymous email setup. Unless there was something specific about the email's contents justifying it, the police seem very much at fault here for attacking someone based on an entirely unauthenticated, unverifiable, untraceable message. Society readily holds people who fall for obvious phishing attacks responsible for their negligence, and this seems similar.
- bbor 2y ago
  To be fair this is very likely the work of "an angry troll", so I have some hope that they'll get caught. People don't tend to be at their best when they're raging, especially when that rage is directed at someone so seemingly non-offensive. Re: the last point, I would definitely not vote to have my police ignore anonymous tips, if it ever came up in a referendum. I think it's a pretty damn good use of tax dollars, as far as these things go.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    Wouldn't it have been better to do the typical thing of sending a patrol unit out to see what might be going on, and then send out the rest of the squad if they request the back up?
    - thfuran 2y ago
      What percentage of tips like this do you think are fraudulent? How long is it worth delaying all the real ones as a matter of practice on the off chance that the tip is bad?
      - dylan604 2y ago
        A lot actually, including this one. How many bomb threats are real? Ohio is struggling with this now because of some stupidity about eating pets. From a student wanting to delay an exam, or whatever else, they are rarely real. The Secret Service filters threats against protectees, the FBI is forwarded threats as well. The problem is that local coppers just don't have the training, and the SWAT teams are always needing something to do, so there's no delay to sending a full on response.

infamouscow 2y ago

Are the police going to verify their identity? How are you going to verify that someone is not also committing identity theft?

babypuncher 2y ago
Well you just so happen to have a complete recording in their voice where they committed the crime. If they called 911 using a voice modulator then the call should have been ignored in the first place.
- infamouscow 2y ago
  Two questions: 1. How the hell do you plan to tell the difference between some prankster using voice modulation and a genuine caller stuck in a situation with weird acoustics? Or are you too dense to realize that emergencies don't always happen in perfect sound conditions? 2. Are you seriously okay with giving police dispatchers godlike powers to decide if your desperate plea for help is "real enough" for them? And if they get it wrong and write you off as a scammer while you're bleeding out, I guess that's just tough luck, huh? Still feeling smug about your brilliant plan now?

qayxc 2y ago

It's not only difficult to verify the identity from phone companies or ISPs (worst case you'd need a court order), depending on the nature of the report and the situation, it might also be straight up dangerous for the caller. Besides, it's pretty damn simple to just a stolen phone or compromised computer to do this sort of thing. If you really were to get the identity this way, you now likely have two victims instead of one...

babypuncher 2y ago
"This phone number was used to make a fraudulent 911 call, here is the recording" should more than enough to secure a warrant. You have a complete recording of the phone call, so you can verify if the person speaking in it was the owner of the phone number. If it's not a match, then you can start investigating friends and family of the owner who would have had access to the phone. If police can't figure out how to do this basic shit then why are we trusting them with SWAT gear?

cge 2y ago

The police apparently chose to do this based on an emailed tip, not a phone call. If the attacker was the least bit competent there will be no way to uncover their identity at all. Even NSA-level traffic and timing analysis would not necessarily be effective against a well-constructed anonymous email setup. Unless there was something specific about the email's contents justifying it, the police seem very much at fault here for attacking someone based on an entirely unauthenticated, unverifiable, untraceable message. Society readily holds people who fall for obvious phishing attacks responsible for their negligence, and this seems similar.

bbor 2y ago
To be fair this is very likely the work of "an angry troll", so I have some hope that they'll get caught. People don't tend to be at their best when they're raging, especially when that rage is directed at someone so seemingly non-offensive. Re: the last point, I would definitely not vote to have my police ignore anonymous tips, if it ever came up in a referendum. I think it's a pretty damn good use of tax dollars, as far as these things go.
- dylan604 2y ago
  Wouldn't it have been better to do the typical thing of sending a patrol unit out to see what might be going on, and then send out the rest of the squad if they request the back up?
  - thfuran 2y ago
    What percentage of tips like this do you think are fraudulent? How long is it worth delaying all the real ones as a matter of practice on the off chance that the tip is bad?
    - dylan604 2y ago
      A lot actually, including this one. How many bomb threats are real? Ohio is struggling with this now because of some stupidity about eating pets. From a student wanting to delay an exam, or whatever else, they are rarely real. The Secret Service filters threats against protectees, the FBI is forwarded threats as well. The problem is that local coppers just don't have the training, and the SWAT teams are always needing something to do, so there's no delay to sending a full on response.