FBI Warns Assholes Are Now Combining Compromised IoT Devices With Swatting Because That's The Hell We Now Live In

from the living-continue-to-envy-the-dead dept

Late last year, it was discovered that yet another set of IoT devices were being turned against their owners by malicious people. It would be a stretch to call these losers "hackers," considering all they did was utilize credentials harvested from multiple security breaches to take control of poorly secured cameras made by Ring.

Password reuse is common and these trolls made the most of it. Streaming their exploits to paying users, the perpetrators shouted racist abuse at homeowners, talked to/taunted their children, and interrupted their sleep by blaring loud noises through the cameras' mics.

This string of events landed Ring in court. Ring claims this isn't the company's fault since the credentials weren't obtained from Ring itself. But Ring's lax security standards allowed users to bypass two-factor authentication and, until recently, didn't warn users of unrecognized login attempts or lock their accounts after a certain number of login failures.

There's another insidious twist to this new form of online/offline abuse. And it's caught the attention of the feds. The FBI says these cameras are now being combined with swatting to inflict additional misery on camera owners.

Recently, offenders have been using victims’ smart devices, including video and audio capable home surveillance devices, to carry out swatting attacks. To gain access to the smart devices, offenders are likely taking advantage of customers who re-use their email passwords for their smart device. The offenders use stolen email passwords to log into the smart device and hijack features, including the live-stream camera and device speakers.

They then call emergency services to report a crime at the victims’ residence. As law enforcement responds to the residence, the offender watches the live stream footage and engages with the responding police through the camera and speakers. In some cases, the offender also live streams the incident on shared online community platforms.

Combining two things people hate into one dangerous blend is someone's idea of a good time. Two recent incidents involving hacked devices and swatting fortunately ended without anyone being killed by law enforcement.

One Florida woman was called by a "hacker" and told to go outside and see if the local SWAT team was there. She was met by police shortly afterwards who told her they'd received a call she'd been murdered by her husband. No raid happened but officers were showered with insults and obscenities by "hackers" via the compromised Ring doorbell/camera for failing to provide the entertainment the online assholes were seeking.

A similar incident happened in Virginia, with the "hacker" taunting both the family and officers as they investigated a fake suicide call.

Through the family's four Ring cameras, a hacker screamed, "Help me!" as officers checked inside the home to make sure everyone was safe.

Back outside, the officers realized the intermittent screaming was coming from the home's Ring cameras.

A man started talking to the officers through the cameras, saying he hacked the homeowner's accounts and faked the 911 call.

[...]

Officer: “What is it that you need from us?”

Hacker: “Oh nothing, we were just [messing] around, after this we’ll log out, tell him to change his Yahoo password, his Ring password, and stop using the same passwords for the same [stuff]."

Chesapeake Police officers covered up the cameras and asked who was screaming. The hacker told officers it was him yelling for help, claiming he livestreamed the Ring cameras when officers arrived and charged people five dollars each to watch online.

So, that's where we're at, hellscape-wise. A nation full of devices that can be taken over by anyone with the right credentials and turned into entertainment for sociopaths. Of course, being better about locking down IoT devices won't stop these same sociopaths from weaponizing local law enforcement agencies. Choosing a strong, unique password isn't going to keep assholes from swatting people. It's only going to deprive them of their ability to witness the potentially deadly results of their actions.

Filed Under: fbi, iot, swatting

Police Departments Are Using Swatting Registries To Help Protect Swatting Targets From Police Officers

from the yeah-it's-weird dept

Swatting isn't going away. Neither are SWAT teams. And the amped-up, guns-out tactics these teams use all but ensure a violent end for targets of bogus 911 calls.

"Swatting" is a cheap and efficient way to terrorize anyone you want terrorized, whether it's a gamer, journalist, online critic, celebrity, activist, or just someone's whose personal info has ended up on the wrong website. Why hire a hitman to take out your enemy when cops are willing to do it for free?

The downside is limited. Even if caught, "swatting" perpetrators are charged with a grab bag of crimes that combined rarely add up to the attempted murder a swatting actually is. The rare exception is serial swatter Tyler Barriss, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for making the bogus 911 call that ended in the death of Andrew Finch at the hands of the Wichita, Kansas police department.

There isn't much being done to deter future swattings -- at least not in terms of additional training or policy changes at law enforcement agencies. It's almost impossible to tell if a 911 call is legit until officers are on the scene, but it does seem these situations could be approached with a little more caution and little less reliance on immediate lethal force deployment.

There are some other efforts being made to limit future tragedies resulting from swatting attempts, as Olivia Solon and Brandy Zadrozny report for NBC. Changes are being made to 911 services in a few US cities that have already shown some positive results.

In June 2018, a Seattle resident who feared a Wichita-style tragedy asked the department to pre-register his address as a swatting risk. The request gave Whitcomb the idea for a city-wide registry, and the registry became part of a unique three-pronged protocol. In September, the police department also established the swatting advisory committee, which includes police, prosecutors, and 911 dispatchers, as well as gamers and tech workers from the city’s large tech community.

[...]

The most innovative part of the protocol, the registry, lets members of the public pre-register their addresses and contact details in an online database via a secure portal. To date, the city has registered 57 profiles of people who believe that they may be swatted. So far, four of them have been targeted by swatters.

This registry idea has already been co-opted by other cities around the nation, which will hopefully insulate some swatting targets from the full force of a SWAT deployment. The article discusses a couple of attempts targeting Seattle activist Ijeoma Oluo. Because she was on the registry, responding officers were advised the calls might be bogus and acted with more restraint.

Six officers, four of whom were armed with rifles, still showed up at Oluo’s home at 6 a.m. But because they knew the address was a swatting risk and had spoken to Oluo, they came to the door without their rifles drawn. They asked her son Malcolm some questions and swept the house to verify no one had been killed. It was all over within minutes.

The second swatting attempt targeting Oluo went the same way:

Again, Seattle police reacted cautiously, sending plain-clothed police officers to the venue to determine whether the threat was real without creating panic. No real threat was detected, but the incident was referred to a federal law enforcement agency.

The registry is a good idea and will save the lives of innocent people. But it does raise the question of why more anonymous reports of violent crimes (active shooters, multiple murders, etc.) aren't subject to the same sort of restraint and caution seen in these two instances.

A member of Seattle's Swatting Mitigation Advisory Committee says swatting "weaponizes" police forces against private citizens. Yes, it does. But part of the problem is the teams sent to deal with calls like these. SWAT teams are weapons. That's pretty much all they offer, at least in their current incarnation. There's no "weaponizing" needed. Swatting would result in death or injury far less often if cops responded to anonymous tips like these with the same restraint shown in the responses to the two calls targeting Oluo.

It seems that officers headed towards potentially-deadly confrontations would want as much information as possible before entering the supposed crime scene. In far too many cases, the actions of officers during swatting attempts shows the opposite, as if everything can wait to be sorted out until after the bullets stop flying.

This isn't to say law enforcement officers are the real problem here. This is only to say that the general law enforcement mindset that sees neighborhoods as war zones and residents as enemy combatants has made something truly terrible even worse.

The real assholes, though, are the ones necessitating all of this in the first place. The people who think it's okay to try to get other people killed or, at the very least, turn their lives into a cop-filled hell for a few hours. And all because a person killed them in a video game, or said something they disagreed with, or embrace different religious and/or political beliefs.

Filed Under: militarized police, police, swatting

YouTube Sues Guy Who Tried To Extort People Through Bogus DMCA Takedowns

from the 512(f)-lives! dept

We've talked in the past about how Section (f) of the DMCA Section 512 is more or less a dead letter. 512(f) is the part that is supposed to stop bogus DMCA takedowns, by saying that you can be liable for "misrepresentations" in takedowns. In practice, though, courts never seem to award anything for bogus takedowns, meaning that it's a "free" way to censor anyone you'd like. Or worse. Earlier this year, we covered how some had taken the DMCA abuse process so far that they were using bogus YouTube DMCA takedowns as part of an extortion scheme. Literally, people would contact popular YouTubers (often those who made videos about Minecraft) and threaten to DMCA their videos if they didn't receive payment.

It appears that YouTube was actually paying attention, and it has now filed a 512(f) claim against at least one of the people doing this, a guy in Omaha, Nebraska named Christopher Brady -- who probably is not having the best week. You can read the complaint here. It's pretty straightforward:

Defendant, Christopher L. Brady (“Brady), has repeatedly attempted to harass and extort money from YouTube content creators through bogus allegations of copyright infringement. This lawsuit seeks to hold him accountable for that misconduct, and for the damage he has caused to YouTube.

In 1998, Congress enacted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 512 (the “DMCA”), to provide a framework for addressing claims of online copyright infringement. In general, the DMCA immunizes online service providers from claims of copyright infringement based on materials uploaded to the services by users, if the services promptly remove allegedly infringing materials upon receipt of notices from copyright holders. Through these notices, the content of which is statutorily prescribed, copyright holders are able to secure the expeditious removal of allegedly infringing materials from online services without the need to prove a claim of infringement in court. Users that receive infringement notices they contend are incorrect may file a counter notification by providing their name, address, and telephone number, and consent to service of process by the complaining party.

Congress also recognized that these “takedown notices” could be used maliciously to secure the removal of content that was not legitimately claimed to be infringing. Accordingly, it included a provision in the DMCA authorizing those aggrieved by fraudulent notices to bring an action against the sender for damages. This is such an action.

The complaint lays out Brady's behavior in fairly great detail.

Defendant Brady targeted the YouTube accounts of Kenzo and ObbyRaidz, among others, in an extortionate scheme.

In January 2019, Defendant Brady, using several falsified identities, sent YouTube multiple notices of alleged copyright infringement pursuant to the DMCA, claiming that two videos uploaded by Kenzo and two videos uploaded by ObbyRaidz supposedly infringed copyrights that he owned.

Defendant Brady’s notices of alleged infringement included the various representations required under the DMCA. Brady identified the specific locations of the videos posted by Kenzo and ObbyRaidz. He represented that he was the original creator of those videos, that he held the copyright to them, that the videos posted by Kenzo and ObbyRaidz infringed his copyrights, and that each of his notices was accurate. And he certified: “UNDER PENALTY OF PERJURY, I am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.” Brady even included links to other copies of the videos in question as “proof” that he, rather than Kenzo and ObbyRaidz, had created them.

Defendant Brady’s notices of alleged infringement were fraudulent. The videos posted by Kenzo and ObbyRaidz that Brady identified in his notices did not infringe any copyright supposedly owned by Brady. Brady knew that at the time he sent the notices. Brady also knew that did not hold the copyright to the videos he identified as his own in the notices. His certifications under penalty of perjury in the notices were knowingly false.

Defendant Brady sent the notices of alleged infringement for the improper purpose of inducing YouTube to remove the identified videos and assess unwarranted copyright strikes on the Kenzo and ObbyRaidz accounts.

The complaint goes on to note -- as we had in our article earlier this year -- the blackmail messages sent to the account creators, noting that once these were publicized, YouTube investigated the claims, removed the strikes on the user accounts and restored the videos. However, it appears that Brady decided to try again -- though this time it appears that it was as part of some larger fight, in which Brady was trying to expose a YouTube user's home address, likely for swatting (the user was swatted a few days later). It's interesting to see that part of YouTube's investigation of the matter apparently involved observing others' Twitter accounts:

A review of Defendant Brady’s and Cxlvxn’s Twitter accounts from this time period suggests they were engaged in some sort of online dispute and it appears that Brady sent the notices of alleged infringement for the improper purpose of inducing Cxlvxn to submit a counter notification, thereby exposing his home address.

Cxlvxn submitted a counter notification on July 4th, 2019. On July 10th, he announced via Twitter that he had been the victim of a swatting scheme that day. “Swatting” is the act of making a bogus call to emergency services in an attempt to bring about the dispatch of a large number of armed police officers to a particular address.

Given the timing of (i) Defendant Brady’s online dispute with Cxlvxn, (ii) Brady’s false copyright claims against Cxlvxn; (iii) Brady’s receipt of Cxlvxn’s true home address via Cxlvxn’s counter-notification; and (iv) the reported swatting incident, it appears Brady used the personal information gained through his abuse of the DMCA process to engage in swatting.

Given this, it's possible that Brady may soon be in a lot deeper shit than a 512(f) civil complaint. Law enforcement often can't go after swatters since they're hard to track down. But if YouTube has done the work for them...

Either way, it's interesting to see YouTube trying to breathe some life back into 512(f). This case seems perfectly made for just such a thing. If this case can't get a 512(f) win, then no case can. YouTube is asking for Brady to cover their legal fees (which I'm sure are substantial), as well as an injunction barring Brady from submitting more bogus DMCA notices. It's interesting to note that they're not even looking to bar him from YouTube entirely -- just from submitting bogus DMCA takedowns. It's also seeking damages for the time and effort the company had to put into dealing with his bogus DMCA takedowns. (Update: I had missed this last bit initially, but have now updated the post to reflect that).

While Brady may end up in deeper hot water over the swatting claims (should prosecutors suddenly take an interest in him over this), from a purely copyright standpoint, it would be nice to see 512(f) succeed in one case before we reach the heat death of the universe.

Filed Under: 512(f), bogus takedowns, censorship, christopher brady, copyright, dmca, extortion, swatting, takedowns
Companies: youtube

Man Who Doxxed Dozens Of People, Engaged In Nineteen 'Swattings', Nets Only One Year In Prison

from the cyber-sentencing-still-mostly-incoherent dept

The treatment of all things "cyber" by the government is incredibly inconsistent. Give someone a password so they can deface a website for 40 minutes and it's two years in jail. Doxx, SWAT, and cyberstalk multiple people and the best the court can do is two years minus time served. The end result is one year in prison for Mir Islam, who doxxed multiple celebrities and politicians, as well as called in fake threats that resulted in the swatting of at least nineteen people, including security researcher Brian Krebs, who uncovered Islam's doxxing tactics.

Krebs' investigation of Islam and his abuse of free credit report services to obtain personal information on a variety of public figures led to the following:

Peeved that I’d outed his methods for doxing public officials, Islam helped orchestrate my swatting the very next day. Within the span of 45 minutes, KrebsOnSecurity.com came under a sustained denial-of-service attack which briefly knocked my site offline.

At the same time, my hosting provider received a phony letter from the FBI stating my site was hosting illegal content and needed to be taken offline. And, then there was the swatting which occurred minutes after that phony communique was sent.

[...]

Nearly a dozen heavily-armed officers responded to the call, forcing me out of my home at gunpoint and putting me in handcuffs before the officer in charge realized it was all a hoax.

The response to the hoax call on Krebs' residence was, by comparison, minimal. Islam also called in a fake active shooter report at the University of Arizona campus. This was apparently in retaliation to a cheerleader's failure to realize Islam's cyberstalking was just another way of saying "I love you."

A woman representing an anonymous “Victim #3” of Islam’s was appearing in lieu of a cheerleader at the University of Arizona that Islam admitted to cyberstalking for several months. When the victim stopped responding to Islam’s overtures, he phoned in an active shooter threat to the local police there that a crazed gunman was on the loose at the University of Arizona campus.

According to Robert Sommerfeld, police commander for the University of Arizona, that 2013 swatting incident involved 54 responding officers, all of whom were prevented from responding to a real emergency as they moved from building to building and room to room at the university, searching for a fictitious assailant. Sommerfeld estimates that Islam’s stunt cost local responders almost $40,000, and virtually brought the business district surrounding the university to a standstill for the better part of the day.

Worse, some of Islam's swatting efforts and cyberstalking occurred while he was "cooperating" with federal prosecutors following his arrest for attempting to sell stolen credit cards to undercover agents.

Federal prosecutors wanted to see Islam jailed for nearly four years -- towards the upper reaches of the mandatory sentencing guidelines. Instead, the judge handed down a sentence of two years. Islam has been in federal custody since July 2015 and that time is being credited towards his sentence, meaning it will only be another year at the most before Islam is free again.

The credit for time served makes sense and the departure from the upper limits of the guidelines is something I would be extremely hesitant to suggest is a bad thing. Prosecutors wanted a much longer sentence, and the allegations here would seem to justify a lengthier imprisonment for Islam.

The problem with the government's fear of anything cyber-related is that the default mode for prosecutors is almost always the upper reaches of the sentencing guidelines, even when the severity of the criminal activity doesn't appear to warrant this sort of punitive sentencing. The government sought a longer sentence for Matthew Keys' minimal participation in a 40-minute headline alteration at a news website. Someone who endangered lives of dozens of people by sending heavily-armed law enforcement officers after them -- in addition to doxxing a large number of public figures and participating in multiple cyberstalkings -- was apparently only deemed dangerous enough to warrant a 46-month sentence, as compared to the 60 months sought in the Keys case.

Then there's this:

Judge Moss, in explaining his brief deliberation on arriving at Islam’s two-year (attenuated) sentence, said he hoped to send a message to others who would endeavor to engage in swatting attacks.

Swatting has the potential to kill people, something clearly not reflected by the "severity" of this sentence.

As Brian Krebs points out, it does send a message, although certainly not the one the judge intended. It says you can endanger the lives of others without seriously affecting your own freedom. It also sends the message that the government -- as a whole -- will remain incoherent and inconsistent in its handling of cybercrime.

Filed Under: brian krebs, crime, dox, doxxing, mir islam, punishment, swatting

Utah Politician Looking To Tackle Doxing, DoS Attacks And Swatting With New Slate Of Cybercrime Amendments

from the as-usual,-bill-has-arrived-in-completely-unfinished-state dept

Three of the Four Horsemen of the Internet Apocalypse (*Revenge Porn not included) are being targeted by Utah legislator David Lifferth with a package of amendments to the state's cybercrime statutes.

Utah Representative David E. Lifferth (R) has filed House Bill 225 which modifies the existing criminal code to include cyber crimes such as doxing, swatting and DoS (denial of service) attacks. According to the amendments, these crimes can now range anywhere from misdemeanors to second-degree felonies.

As is often the case when (relatively) new unpleasantness is greeted with new legislation, the initial move is an awkward attempt to bend the transgressions around existing laws, or vice versa. Lifferth's is no exception. As GamePolitics points out, only one of the new crimes is specifically referred to by its given name: DoS attacks. The other two can only be inferred by the wording, which is unfortunately broad.

Swatting becomes:

[making] a false report to an emergency response service, including a law enforcement dispatcher or a 911 emergency response service, or intentionally aids, abets, or causes a third party to make the false report, and the false report describes an ongoing emergency situation that as reported is causing or poses an imminent threat of causing serious bodily injury, serious physical injury, or death; and states that the emergency situation is occurring at a specified location.

It's the stab at doxing that fares the worst. In its present form, the wording would implicate a great deal of protected speech. This is the wording Lifferth would like to add to the "Electronic communication harassment" section.

electronically publishes, posts, or otherwise makes available personal identifying information in a public online site or forum.

Considering it's tied to "intent to annoy, alarm, intimidate, offend, abuse, threaten, harass, frighten, or disrupt the electronic communications of another," the amended statute could be read as making the publication of personal information by news outlets a criminal activity -- if the person whose information is exposed feels "offended" or "annoyed." Having your criminal activities detailed alongside personally identifiable information would certainly fall under these definitions, which could lead to the censorship (self- or otherwise) of police blotter postings, mugshot publication or identifying parties engaged in civil or criminal court proceedings.

It also would to make "outing" an anonymous commenter/forum member/etc. a criminal act, even if the amount of information exposed never reaches the level of what one would commonly consider to be "doxing." Would simply exposing the name behind the avatar be enough to trigger possible criminal charges?

While it's inevitable that lawmakers will have to tangle with these issues eventually, it's disheartening to see initial efforts being routinely delivered in terrible -- and usually unconstitutional -- shape. We expect our legislators to be better than this. After all, it's their job to craft laws and to do so with some semblance of skill and common sense. If nothing else, we expect them to learn something from previous failures to pass bad laws, whether theirs or someone else's.

Filed Under: cybercrime, david lifferth, dos attacks, doxing, doxxing, swatting, utah

Congressional Rep Who Introduced Anti-Swatting Bill... Victim Of Attempted Swatting

from the what-is-that-accomplishing? dept

Back in November, Congresswoman Katherine Clark introduced an anti-swatting bill. As you probably already know, swatting is when someone calls in a fake report to police about an ongoing incident at someone's home -- usually something like an "active shooter" or hostage taking or something similar -- in the interest of having police departments overreact and send out a SWAT team to deal with the situation, such as by raiding the home. The bill looks to make it a felony to use the phone system to "transmit false information with the intent to cause an emergency law enforcement response." While I'm not aware of anyone (so far) getting killed by a swatting, it seems like it's only a matter of time.

Either way, given all this, it probably shouldn't come as a huge surprise that on Sunday night, Rep. Clark found herself swatted, leading the Melrose, Massachusetts police to show up at her home, though it sounds like they handled everything carefully and appropriately.

Melrose Police spokesman John Guilfoil said the department received a recorded telephone call with a computer-generated voice at 9:57 p.m. on the department’s business line. The call, Guilfoil said, referred to “shots fired and an active shooter” at Clark’s address.

He said Melrose police officers, but not a SWAT team, responded to the address, spoke with the homeowner, and determined the call was hoax and there was no danger.

Of course, in most cases, it's quite difficult for law enforcement to ever track down whoever called in the hoax report, and it's rare for the callers to ever be caught -- though it does sometimes happen. Of course, if swatters continue to target politicians looking to pass laws against them, expect the laws and the pressure to capture them and "set an example" to continue to ratchet up. I'm sure that whoever swatted Rep. Clark is assuming that it will be impossible to track down who did that, but the higher a target you aim at, the more likely that higher powered law enforcement gets involved -- meaning it gets increasingly likely that whoever did it will be tracked down.

In the meantime, it would also be nice if we started looking at the root causes of swatting, such as the militarization of police departments where that's not even remotely necessary.

Filed Under: felony, katherine clark, swatting

Maybe The Best Way To Stop All This Swatting Is To Have Fewer SWAT Teams?

from the just-a-suggestion dept

As you may have heard, last week, a 13-year-old boy admitted to calling in three separate swattings. This came about a month and a half after another person accused of a swatting incident was arrested in Las Vegas. Swatting -- the act of calling in a bogus "hostage situation" (or something similar) to a 911 line -- has been around for a while, but has really taken off recently, especially in connection to online gamers who live stream their games. Some gamers seem to think that it's somehow a fun thing to see a SWAT team raid someone via a livestream video. The excellent podcast "Reply All" recently had a really great episode all about swatting.

For years, there have been different questions raised about how to stop such things. Educating police about the practice of swatting is a big one -- so that, at the very least, they have some basic realization that not every such call is a real situation. But, of course, people are always looking for a "complete" solution to the problem, not recognizing that sometimes there are no perfect solutions. Swatting is a monumentally stupid practice. It puts completely innocent people (often including small children) in very serious danger of being killed. And it's happening enough that rather than being some totally rare occurrence there are semi-regular news stories on it happening. It has all the ingredients of a moral panic, in which people will freak out and demand that "something must be done" and that "something" will likely be some sort of regulation that will have all sorts of unintended consequences.

But there does seem to be one solution that isn't even on the table: maybe have fewer SWAT teams and stop arming police like they're in a war zone. Radley Balko has been talking about this stuff for ages, including in his excellent book, Rise of the Warrior Cop. But this idea that arming police ever more heavily as a way to deter or prevent crime doesn't have much support at all. There are very rare instances where the level of militarization of police would ever be necessary (if ever). Yet, when police have such equipment, they inevitably use it whenever an opportunity presents itself.

And now, all too often, that "opportunity" is when some teenager makes a prank phone call for laughs, and succeeds in putting real lives in danger. So rather than trying to pass stringent new laws that won't do a damn thing in stopping teenagers from being teenagers, how about we take a step back and perhaps pull back on the idea that we need to arm police to this level in the first place?

Filed Under: militarized police, pranks, swat teams, swatting

Counter-Strike Player's Twitch Stream Captures His Own SWATting... And Some Questionable Police Behavior

from the LOUD-NOISES dept

One of the more unfortunate side effects of police militarization isn't directly the fault of law enforcement agencies or their enablers at the Pentagon. But it is related. Thanks to the Drug War, nearly every town in the US has a SWAT team or one minutes away, whether they need one or not. This has led to the rise of SWATting -- calling in a false report in order to send a charged-up SWAT team to raid someone's home.

This has been used by scam artists against security bloggers and by trolls against celebrities, but has especially seen an increase as a form of harassment within the gaming community. A recent incident is not only notable for dragging schools into the mix, but also for being caught on tape.

Jordan "Kootra" Mathewson, who streams his sessions on Twitch, was streaming from an office near a Littleton, CO school (which was put on lockdown) when the SWAT came "knocking."

What's interesting about this (beyond the lengths griefers will go to make someone miserable) is some of the actions caught on video.

At the beginning, the SWAT team does the usual cop thing of everyone yelling at the same time because that apparently works better than having a point person designated to deliver concise, well-enunciated instructions. (Note: it does work better than other situations where officers have yelled contradictory instructions over each other ["Stand up!! Lay on the ground!!].) Bonus points for swearing because no one takes guys with assault rifles and Kevlar vests seriously unless they use variations of the word "fuck."

About two minutes in, after Mathewson has been searched and cuffed (and held on the ground by SWAT boots, just in case), an officer asks where his phone is. He picks it up and casually starts looking through it. First off, the new rules say get a warrant, although I'd imagine an active shooter situation (even if fake) falls under exigent circumstances. But there doesn't seem to be any hesitation on the officer's part. He just asks where Mathewson's cell phone is… and then takes it. He continues looking through it for the next couple of minutes while asking questions occasionally.

Also of note: around the 4:30 mark, Mathewson explains to the cops that he's streaming. Once he explains that people are watching, the attention shifts from Mathewson to the camera -- which the cops then disable. They have no reason to and they certainly don't have the right to, but they just go ahead and do with a notable lack of hesitation. (The same cop who casually started looking through Mathewson's phone leads the way.)

As the camera is gracelessly dismounted, you can hear the other SWAT member ask: "If you heard us yelling, why didn't you move?" Mathewson answers that he had earphones on, but the better answer would have been, "Because I didn't want to get shot." I can think of no earthly reason why someone being raided by a SWAT team would make any movements that he or she hasn't been directed to make. At the point that Mathewson realizes what's happening, the SWAT team is still clearing rooms. Had he decided to make a surprise appearance in the hall, there's a good chance he would have-- at minimum -- been subjected to even rougher treatment. There's also a rather healthy (ha!) chance that someone might have fired off a round or two, given that these officers were looking for an active shooter and not, say, a serial parking law violator.

Mathewson has to walk them through the whole process of killing the stream (audio can still be heard for another minute or so), leaving the rest of the narrative to be captured in police reports. Fortunately, nothing went "wrong" in this raid, so no one was wounded or subjected to excessive amounts of force. It's also rather fortunate that Mathewson was using headphones, because one can only imagine what might have happened if the steady stream of Counter-Strike gunfire had been audible.

There have been several SWATings in recent months, but none of them have given us a look at one in progress. The SWAT team did nothing wrong by taking the threat seriously, although one officer's actions definitely approach the outer edges of what's acceptable/Constitutional and he did so with a practiced ease.

Filed Under: counter strike, jordan mathewson, kootra, law enforcement, phones, recording, search, swatting, warrant

Hey, Idiots, Stop Swatting People

from the sore-losers dept

You know what I bet law enforcement folks really hate? This whole swatting thing that sometimes happens. For those of you not aware, swatting is when you fake a call into police that results in a local SWAT team being dispatched to your victim's residence, typically shortly followed up by you getting a not-so-pleasant visit from the authorities. It's a really stupid thing to do, it's dangerous, it's criminal, and it makes you a horrible person. But when it's all over losing in a damned video game, then it's callous on a level too far off the charts to map.

Yes, it's that age-old story of a person who couldn't handle losing in Call of Duty calling in a double murder and getting SWAT to visit the winner's home. I have a pretty sick sense of humor, and a wonderful eye for the profane, I might add, but this isn't funny. People could have literally died. And the authorities aren't going to screw around with this, either.

Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice issued a statement on Tuesday's "swatting" incident, calling it an "outrageous waste of law enforcement resources and taxpayer dollars. Through a collaboration with our law enforcement partners, we will use every tool we have to track down whoever threatens public safety like this," it said. "'Swatting' is a serious crime that endangers first responders and those in legitimate need of their help. We will hold any perpetrators accountable and seek restitution for the tax dollars wasted."

I imagine that, once this person is found, a hellacious number of charges will be brought against them. Calling in a false report, misuse of public funds/authorities, public endangerment, fraud, blah, blah, blah. In the end, someone is going to have some serious trouble coming their way and they're damned well going to deserve it. Terrifying an entire neighborhood over losing a game isn't even childish, it's evil. Stop it. Bad humans.

Filed Under: law enforcement, swatting, video games

DailyDirt: Swatting Is Not A Harmless Prank

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

What do people like to do with their free time? Most people probably enjoy doing normal things like reading, surfing the web, watching TV, playing sports, or playing video games. And then there are some who apparently like "swatting" -- a potentially deadly prank where phone hackers make emergency calls reporting violent crimes, life-threatening hostage situations, etc., while spoofing their caller IDs to make it seem like the calls are coming from their target's phone number. Unfortunately, for the targeted victims, this means heavily armed police SWAT teams descending on their homes, sometimes breaking down doors and bursting into their homes. Here are a few eye-opening stories about swatting.

• One of the best phone hackers out there might be a guy named "Li'l Hacker," who happens to be blind and started "phone phreaking" when he was just 14. What started as an "innocent" hobby turned bad when he started associating with a gang of phone hackers led by an ex-con. [url]
• Security reporter Brian Krebs may have been one of the first journalists to have been the target of a swatting. Having reported about hacking crimes for over a decade, Krebs was used to being the target of attacks. His website is frequently disrupted by DDoS attacks. But this time, at least a dozen police officers showed up at his door with pistols, shotguns, and assault rifles pointed at him. [url]
• Even celebrities can't escape swatting. Victims have included Tom Cruise, Clint Eastwood, Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton, Selena Gomez, Justin Timberlake, Russell Brand, Rihanna, and Chris Brown, just to name a few. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: attacks, brian krebs, phone hacks, phreaking, police, prank, swat team, swatting