The FBI has formed a national database to track and prevent 'swatting'
The FBI has formed a national database to track and prevent 'swatting'
Advances in technology allow prank callers to mask their voice, phone number or IP address (also called “spoofing”), or make their false 911 calls sound more credible.
Advances in technology allow prank callers to mask their voice, phone number or IP address, or make their false 911 calls sound more credible.
Author Patrick Tomlinson and his wife, business owner Niki Robinson, have been "swatted" at their home in Milwaukee more than 40 times, often resulting in police pointing guns at their heads. Their tormentors have also called in false bomb threats to venues using their names in three states. Yet law enforcement hasn’t been able to stop the prank calls.
The couple’s terror comes as these incidents appear to be on the rise in the U.S., at least on college campuses. In less than a single week in April, universities including Clemson, Florida, Boston, Harvard, Cornell, Pittsburgh, Rutgers and Oklahoma, as well as Middlebury College, were targeted by swatters.
To combat the growing problem, the FBI has begun taking formal measures to get a comprehensive picture of the problem on a national level.
![[HN] The FBI Has Formed a National Database to Track and Prevent “Swatting”](https://lemmy.uhhoh.com/pictrs/image/29f4035f-25ab-475c-bf3f-ef07360d102d.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=196)
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Isn't FBI too high level to prevent swatting? Seems like if the local police are getting sent out, any solution would have to happen at that level instead.
Like if the local PD couldn't figure it out with 43 reported swattings on the couple mentioned in the story, how is a national database going to help?
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This is what's killing me. How can they NOT be keeping track?
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Any one, from any where in the world, can do it.
Between VPNs and VOIP phones, it’d almost impossible to sort out whose legitimate and whose not without showing up.
As a short term fix, people who are frequently swatted, usually coordinate with the local/responding cops so that if there’s a call at their adress, they call first before breaking down doors
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Sometimes I'll listen in on police radios and you will hear officers sigh like, "Damn, not this shit again" cause they recognize the address they are being sent to for a call and remember the guy from just a few prior meetings.
And now these cops are being sent to the same couple over 40 times and are like, "Oh ummm gee, I wonder who these people could be".
I honestly think the real reason is that most of these cops want these calls to be true, because they get sold on the idea that being a cop is cool and about fighting crime when 90% of the job is super boring.
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judging by the lacklustre assistance Tomlinson has been getting (as per the article) it seems law enforcement doesn't care that their resources are being horribly put to waste by these incidents? You'd think it would be dealt with the utmost urgency.
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That assumption is predicated on law enforcement being willing to publish statistics on their actions. You can't have this work without that. Considering how often SWAT teams are unnecessarily used and the military tactics they employ, the results will be unflattering to police departments.
Of course they don't want their time wasted, but they won't trade transparency and accountability for it.
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It feels wrong to use the word "prank" with this. Isn't there a better word they can use?
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"Attempted murder" seems appropriate
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Also known as the WolfCry DB.
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VOIP has more or less reduced phones to the status of email and other internet services. It's amazing that there weren't more trust provisions put in place for verifying phone numbers prior to the shift away from the old phone lines. The militarization of police is bad too, but it's amazing that there was a technology change that removed a point of trust from something as important as the phone system and 911 calls. It's a truly bizarre situation we find ourselves in, and frankly I'd rather we went back to the pre-VOIP days at this point.