9 ms·

I'm unwisely and unadvisedly wading into this half-cocked. Swatting wouldn't even be a thing if <any number of logical things> - Anonymous calls should be tre

I'm unwisely and unadvisedly wading into this half-cocked. Swatting wouldn't even be a thing if <any number of logical things> - Anonymous calls should be treated with high levels of suspicion as to their legitimacy - First response training that's even moderately appropriate - Situational awareness beyond what one's been informed by third parties - Empathy for all humans - Any kind of notion of that a scenario may not actually be as described by a single anonymous voice A very (un)funny irony is that there are numerous stories I've read about domestic violence victims being arrested, as opposed to the attacker, which implies there's some level of suspicion in some circumstances about the information the police are being fed. Swatting, as a thing, indicates there's some kind of hero-pressure build-up that overrules any kind of <all the things I listed above> whereby that pressure has the possibility of impending release.

blindriver 2y ago
No, because if every call isn’t treated like a real emergency, in the off chance that one of them actually is an emergency then everyone would be crucified by the media and lawyers. Look at all the school shootings as an example, or even the Trump assassination attempt.
- stavros 2y ago
  Right, but when you smash down someone's door and see them playing games on a computer, instead of cooking meth while making bombs by tying guns together, maybe you shouldn't continue treating the situation as an emergency.
  - BLKNSLVR 2y ago
    And if they can't find the person who made the call to charge them for door repairs, then they shouldn't have busted down the door (and should pay for the repairs).
    - stavros 2y ago
      Over here (Greece), anonymous reports are generally given very low priority, to the point where if someone anonymous reports a suspicious vehicle, the police might not even investigate. A report by an eponymous reporter does generally get investigated, though, because there's a lower likelihood of the report being frivolous.
- BLKNSLVR 2y ago
  That doesn't cover all the things I'm (maybe poorly) attempting to suggest. Treat calls that don't have the hallmarks of an emergency as "maybe not an emergency" - I admit that sounds simplistic and requires heavy training, however. But my commentary was more about the gung-ho-ness of the follow-up. Don't houses have windows that aren't always blocked by drawn curtains? Don't binoulars exist and are relatively portable? Aren't there relatively quick and painless methods to adjudicate a situation prior to knocking impolitely? Even if time may be of the essence. One day maybe the heavy knock on the door is a trigger that blows up an entire Police / SWAT response team - then there might be some new policies around situatonal awareness instituted. (not that I would in any way promote such a grotesque act of violence). The police are putting themselves in danger by their own behaviour. Re: Trump assassination attempt, wouldn't that have been averted if someone just "went and had a look"?
- sixothree 2y ago
  If it’s real you don’t need to be anonymous.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    Fear of retribution/not wanting to get involved is a real thing. Also are you proposing that 911 operators confirm people's real identities before accepting their call and dispatching someone?
    - BLKNSLVR 2y ago
      No, but at least have the calling number presented to the 911 operator, with various options categorised as more or less trustworthy. And 911 calls should bypass any 'calling number protection'. Someone else pointed out that the whole phone system is a dog's breakfast, which also needs to be fixed for various easy-scam-exploitation reasons as well. The only reason not to do it is that the corps that run the networks don't want to have to pay to make their shit fit for society's purpose rather than their own.
      - llamaimperative 2y ago
        What specific effect would you expect “categorize as less trustworthy” have? Agreed on telephone infra in general
        BLKNSLVR 2y ago
        Non-spoofable and local number: trustworthy Spoofable local number: slightly less trustworthy Non-local number: less trustworthy International number: barely trustworthy VoIP: maybe slightly more trustworthy than international. Said infra probably limits the ability to distinguish between these, however, so that becomes the primary issue.
        llamaimperative 2y ago
        I wasn't clear: what does that change? Do you tell emergency responders not to turn their lights on en route? To put it at the bottom of the queue after helping the old lady cross the street? To politely knock on the alleged hostage-taker's door instead of kicking it in?
- UncleMeat 2y ago
  That's also observably not a thing. Castle Rock is a rather famous scotus case where the cops failed to do squat about a guy with a restraining order kidnapping his kids despite a law specifically saying that they shall act on said restraining orders and there was no allowable section 1983 claim against the cops just failing to act.
- Nasrudith 2y ago
  That is the same bullshit logic used for zero tolerance policy for "preventing lawsuits" but somehow even worse.
stavros 2y ago
It's a US cultural thing to either avoid blaming the police for anything, or make excuses for them. Brutal police behavior is seen as either acceptable, or what even desirable. I've seen reddit posts where a protester slightly taunts the police and gets pepper sprayed in the face, and all the commenters were gleefully saying things like "fuck around and find out", without even thinking that maybe there wasn't enough fucking around to warrant any finding out. When you try and point this out, you're called various names, because apparently you either support the police 100%, or you're a criminal.
- hipadev23 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - Nursie 2y ago
    Disagree - community moderated quality floats to the top under such systems, exposing the better posts to more eyes and downregulating low-quality shitposting. It can certainly lead to echo-chamber mentality, but without it we'd see more low-effort, low quality posts drowning out discourse.
    - bruce511 2y ago
      You're assuming that down-votes are used to assess the quality of the post, and not agreement with the content. I would suggest that both appear here. Personally I would prefer votes to be on quality of post rather than popularity of position as that leads to the possibility of examining an issue from multiple viewpoints. (When responding to a post that has been thought out, but down voted, I feel the need to point out that although I disagree, I'm not the one downvoting.) I do think that voting improves the quality overall. But a better system might be separate options for 'agree/disagree' vs 'quality / pithy' posts. (I also thinkbthis would be horrible UI, so meh)
      - hipadev23 2y ago
        Yep exactly. I’d argue they create echo chambers far more than we’d like to admit. It’s also not simply voting but also algorithmic of sorting content by likes, and implicitly excluding anything under a certain threshold. I’ve felt this way for nearly twenty years now, coinciding with the rise of reddit, twitter, and facebook alongside the decline of forums, blogs, and rss. On any topic with even slight amount of contention, you very quickly see people aligning toward the one-true-belief because they observe and react to the crowd supporting that opinion.
scoot 2y ago
Apparently you can even (unintentionally) swat yourself: https://www.google.com/search?q=lv+killed+for+calling+the+police https://www.google.com/search?q=lv+killed+for+calling+the+po... (Google link for choice of news sources...)
nkrisc 2y ago
And yet choosing to weaponize that against innocent people is as bad as those other illogical things. Yes, the police response in this country is often absurd. Using that to harass and harm people is equally awful.
edm0nd 2y ago
These are not "Anonymous" calls though. The SWATer kids call into 911/e-911 centers using a spoofed number of the victims.
- adolph 2y ago
  > using a spoofed number of the victims. Open telephone system security holes seem as much a malpractice as the militarization of police.
- BLKNSLVR 2y ago
  That's not mentioned in the article. It does mention that the numbers of the victims were shared, but doesn't specifically say they were spoofed. If it's that easy to spoof a phone number then that system is completely fucked and not fit for purpose. And the efforts that a private investigator needed to go to, to track down the perpetrator, indicates that there is no way to track the source of the phone calls - that's ludicrous (but probably the norm).

blindriver 2y ago

No, because if every call isn’t treated like a real emergency, in the off chance that one of them actually is an emergency then everyone would be crucified by the media and lawyers. Look at all the school shootings as an example, or even the Trump assassination attempt.

stavros 2y ago
Right, but when you smash down someone's door and see them playing games on a computer, instead of cooking meth while making bombs by tying guns together, maybe you shouldn't continue treating the situation as an emergency.
- BLKNSLVR 2y ago
  And if they can't find the person who made the call to charge them for door repairs, then they shouldn't have busted down the door (and should pay for the repairs).
  - stavros 2y ago
    Over here (Greece), anonymous reports are generally given very low priority, to the point where if someone anonymous reports a suspicious vehicle, the police might not even investigate. A report by an eponymous reporter does generally get investigated, though, because there's a lower likelihood of the report being frivolous.
BLKNSLVR 2y ago
That doesn't cover all the things I'm (maybe poorly) attempting to suggest. Treat calls that don't have the hallmarks of an emergency as "maybe not an emergency" - I admit that sounds simplistic and requires heavy training, however. But my commentary was more about the gung-ho-ness of the follow-up. Don't houses have windows that aren't always blocked by drawn curtains? Don't binoulars exist and are relatively portable? Aren't there relatively quick and painless methods to adjudicate a situation prior to knocking impolitely? Even if time may be of the essence. One day maybe the heavy knock on the door is a trigger that blows up an entire Police / SWAT response team - then there might be some new policies around situatonal awareness instituted. (not that I would in any way promote such a grotesque act of violence). The police are putting themselves in danger by their own behaviour. Re: Trump assassination attempt, wouldn't that have been averted if someone just "went and had a look"?
sixothree 2y ago
If it’s real you don’t need to be anonymous.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  Fear of retribution/not wanting to get involved is a real thing. Also are you proposing that 911 operators confirm people's real identities before accepting their call and dispatching someone?
  - BLKNSLVR 2y ago
    No, but at least have the calling number presented to the 911 operator, with various options categorised as more or less trustworthy. And 911 calls should bypass any 'calling number protection'. Someone else pointed out that the whole phone system is a dog's breakfast, which also needs to be fixed for various easy-scam-exploitation reasons as well. The only reason not to do it is that the corps that run the networks don't want to have to pay to make their shit fit for society's purpose rather than their own.
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      What specific effect would you expect “categorize as less trustworthy” have? Agreed on telephone infra in general
      - BLKNSLVR 2y ago
        Non-spoofable and local number: trustworthy Spoofable local number: slightly less trustworthy Non-local number: less trustworthy International number: barely trustworthy VoIP: maybe slightly more trustworthy than international. Said infra probably limits the ability to distinguish between these, however, so that becomes the primary issue.
        llamaimperative 2y ago
        I wasn't clear: what does that change? Do you tell emergency responders not to turn their lights on en route? To put it at the bottom of the queue after helping the old lady cross the street? To politely knock on the alleged hostage-taker's door instead of kicking it in?
UncleMeat 2y ago
That's also observably not a thing. Castle Rock is a rather famous scotus case where the cops failed to do squat about a guy with a restraining order kidnapping his kids despite a law specifically saying that they shall act on said restraining orders and there was no allowable section 1983 claim against the cops just failing to act.
Nasrudith 2y ago
That is the same bullshit logic used for zero tolerance policy for "preventing lawsuits" but somehow even worse.

stavros 2y ago

It's a US cultural thing to either avoid blaming the police for anything, or make excuses for them. Brutal police behavior is seen as either acceptable, or what even desirable. I've seen reddit posts where a protester slightly taunts the police and gets pepper sprayed in the face, and all the commenters were gleefully saying things like "fuck around and find out", without even thinking that maybe there wasn't enough fucking around to warrant any finding out. When you try and point this out, you're called various names, because apparently you either support the police 100%, or you're a criminal.

hipadev23 2y ago
[flagged]
- Nursie 2y ago
  Disagree - community moderated quality floats to the top under such systems, exposing the better posts to more eyes and downregulating low-quality shitposting. It can certainly lead to echo-chamber mentality, but without it we'd see more low-effort, low quality posts drowning out discourse.
  - bruce511 2y ago
    You're assuming that down-votes are used to assess the quality of the post, and not agreement with the content. I would suggest that both appear here. Personally I would prefer votes to be on quality of post rather than popularity of position as that leads to the possibility of examining an issue from multiple viewpoints. (When responding to a post that has been thought out, but down voted, I feel the need to point out that although I disagree, I'm not the one downvoting.) I do think that voting improves the quality overall. But a better system might be separate options for 'agree/disagree' vs 'quality / pithy' posts. (I also thinkbthis would be horrible UI, so meh)
    - hipadev23 2y ago
      Yep exactly. I’d argue they create echo chambers far more than we’d like to admit. It’s also not simply voting but also algorithmic of sorting content by likes, and implicitly excluding anything under a certain threshold. I’ve felt this way for nearly twenty years now, coinciding with the rise of reddit, twitter, and facebook alongside the decline of forums, blogs, and rss. On any topic with even slight amount of contention, you very quickly see people aligning toward the one-true-belief because they observe and react to the crowd supporting that opinion.

scoot 2y ago

Apparently you can even (unintentionally) swat yourself: https://www.google.com/search?q=lv+killed+for+calling+the+police https://www.google.com/search?q=lv+killed+for+calling+the+po... (Google link for choice of news sources...)

nkrisc 2y ago

And yet choosing to weaponize that against innocent people is as bad as those other illogical things. Yes, the police response in this country is often absurd. Using that to harass and harm people is equally awful.

edm0nd 2y ago

These are not "Anonymous" calls though. The SWATer kids call into 911/e-911 centers using a spoofed number of the victims.

adolph 2y ago
> using a spoofed number of the victims. Open telephone system security holes seem as much a malpractice as the militarization of police.
BLKNSLVR 2y ago
That's not mentioned in the article. It does mention that the numbers of the victims were shared, but doesn't specifically say they were spoofed. If it's that easy to spoof a phone number then that system is completely fucked and not fit for purpose. And the efforts that a private investigator needed to go to, to track down the perpetrator, indicates that there is no way to track the source of the phone calls - that's ludicrous (but probably the norm).