Police were dispatched toward Smith’s residence but were called off when they learned it was a false alarm and that everyone inside the home was safe.
Special counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing the prosecution of former President Donald Trump in two federal cases, was the target of an attempted swatting at his Maryland residence on Christmas Day.
According to two law enforcement sources, someone called 911 and said that Smith had shot his wife at the address where Smith lives.
Montgomery County Police dispatched units toward the home but were called off when the Deputy U.S. Marshals protecting Smith and his family told police that it was a false alarm and that everyone inside the home was safe.
No arrests have been made in connection with the incident.
No arrests have been made in connection with the incident.
This shit needs to change. This has been a problem for too many years now.
For real. Maybe people will take it seriously now that we’ve gone from the swatting live steamers to swatting representatives and elected officials.
This incidence of swatting is literally terrorism.
I get that, but we tend to not take terrorism very seriously when it’s domestic terrorism.
When it’s right wing domestic terrorism
Yep. When it’s lefties chaining themselves to a fence to protest nuclear weapons we beat them half to death before giving them life in prison.
Yeah. When I first heard about swatting you heard about arrests. Now it seems like the cops don’t give a shit.
When I was in school you’d get a bomb threat in the county once a year or so but they always caught them. How are police so inept now?
Because our phone regulations are absolute shit now and thus it’s much easier to hide this shit with everything now.
This is the real answer. Arrest the spoofers. Anyone can vpn and spoof a phone call. It’s why I don’t answer my phone anymore
I don’t answer my phone either. I have a special Ring tone for the family, that’s it. At work I got moved to a new location and asked me if I needed my phone. I said no and haven’t used the office phone since. I email companies and setup in person meetings or teams meetings. There’s no need for a phone at work if one can just do teams.
Yes, the telephone regulation is the issue. Remind me though, which statutes exactly?
Edit: still haven’t heard anything about which technologies aren’t regulated enough to prevent swatting, or what regulations could be implemented to prevent swatting. How about instead of downvoting, you guys go come up with some examples, and if they’re already laws on the books you have to take back the downvote. No? Shocker, that.
It’s the regulations that don’t exist when we’ve got new technology that needs to be regulated that are the problem. And sorry, I don’t have a list of every telephone regulation on me to go through and tell you which ones, nor the time to do so.
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a) Phones have existed for over a century and are quite well-regulated;
b) It is already illegal to lodge a false emergency call with emergency services: https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/the-crime-of-swatting-fake-9-1-1-calls-have-real-consequences1
The technology isn’t new, regulations already exist, the problem is that the regulations are not being properly enforced.
VPNs, virtual numbers, voip, and tor are somewhat new and fairly unregulated. It’s dead simple to setup to make a very hard to trace phone call.
None of those are traditional phone services, they’re all internet based so regulated differently. I agree they should be regulated as telephone utilities but right now they’re not.
Oh go on, come up with something instead of just downvoting me. I know it’s hard, actual work even, but you’re never gonna change minds otherwise.
I’ve posted it elsewhere, but those are all just technologies (and of those, only Tor could be considered close to “new”), and we don’t need special regulation to make it illegal to do crimes with them. Even still, those just make it hard for normal people to track; it’s a minor inconvenience for the US Government, at most.
But again, if you think regulations are lacking, offer some solutions! The only rule is, you can’t get mad at me if what you come up with is already a law on the books.
When I was in school you’d get a bomb threat in the county once a year or so but they always caught them.
I’m actually surprised about that. Maybe you went to school at a different time from me? I graduated in 1995. A couple of times a year, some kid (probably) would call in a bomb threat so they could get out of a test or whatever and they never got caught. We had a pay phone right outside the school, which didn’t help.
The cops probably like it because they get to LARP like it’s Call of Duty for a few hours.
Can’t have swatting problems if you don’t have swat teams.
Seriously, there should be a major push for police departments to de-emphasize swat and stop executing no-knock warrants.
This is the real solution.
They’ll get whoever did this. The feds don’t take getting messed with lightly
Not sure it could be considered attempted murder, but harm & death are real risks in a swat raid.
Not to mention cost and risk to the officers. It should be a very serious crime. Not sure what crime it is though. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were treated the same as filing a false report which would be way too lenient.
I’m down for redirecting their local swat teams to their house unannounced. Give them a taste of their own medicine
I think it’s awful, but how do you suggest making changes? The only thing I can think of is tracking 9-1-1 calls, but doing more of that discourages people from anonymously calling in emergencies, which could lead to more deaths.
Er… What? You think they can’t or don’t already track 911 calls? How do emergency responders give where you are if you can’t actually talk while on the phone, like if you’re hiding from an intruder in your house?
Calling in a fictional emergency needs punishment. The alternative is wasting emergency service time with impunity, having them off chasing wild geese while someone with a real emergency is dying.
Edit: And yes, this is already illegal and has already resulted in arrests in the real world: https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/the-crime-of-swatting-fake-9-1-1-calls-have-real-consequences1
It just needs to be enforced.
911 calls are tracked. Listen to your local police scanner. Even if someone calls and immediately hangs up, they have a pretty good idea where that person was calling from.
I think @MagicShel meant we should actually use the information we already have, and prosecute it like the attempted murder that it is.
Listen to your local police scanner.
Can’t. It’s encrypted.
Encrypted? Or digital? I thought the one here was because all you could hear was what sounded like modem static when someone keyed up. Turns out it was just a digital “encryption” that could be defeated with a $20 baofeng radio.
There are however a few places that are straight up encrypted with their own keys, and not much you can do about that.
Last time I called 9-1-1 they confirmed my location, and name without me telling them who, or where I was calling from.
9-1-1 only cares about getting help to the scene. AND, if being anonymous is an issue for you, use burners.
At a minimum tell the responding officers that the call was anonymous and hasn’t been verified. I don’t know beyond that. Remove anonymity but also seal the records automatically to be unsealed only if the call itself is a crime? But we’ve had a long time to deal with this and think about solutions, and it’s hard to believe we’ve not come up with a single way to address the issue.
Finding out who placed an anonymous phone call is not that hard, for the DOJ. You’re thinking about prevention which is much harder, maybe impossible given how quick emergency response has to be.
Swatting however is a crime, and arresting and punishing someone for committing a crime after the fact shouldn’t be hard. This isn’t someone stealing to feed their family, this is childish maliciousness at best and attempted murder-by-cop at worst.
It actually could be very hard to find the perpetrator with overseas VPNs and VOIP phone numbers that can be spoofed.
It would be hard for you or me. It would be a minor inconvenience for the US Government.
Dude I knew about that stuff before most people in the world, 20 years ago.
VPNs can still make users anonymous, regardless of all the above. They are not cracking strong encryption in those tunnels, and overseas VPN providers can provide anonymizing VPN services that they won’t be able to trace. There may actually be nothing they can do about it.
Dude, I remember after 9/11 telling my dad about the comprehensive spying going on since the PATRIOT Act, and arguing with him that yes in fact it was possible with current technology at the time 🙄
As a graybeard yourself, you should already know that cracking security doesn’t always mean breaking encryption. The US gets to throw its weight around with basically any other country, so if there’s any scrap of data available they’ll find it. Unless whoever you’re looking for has perfect opsec (which I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist because humans make mistakes) or works for an APT, they will be found. And someone at that level isn’t swatting politicians, they’re having the Pentagon (/s, couldn’t resist the reference 😋).
Die Hard has John McClane making an anonymous report of terrorists, which is then responded to by a single cop who drives by to see if there’s anything going on.
When did that change?
When police started buying military surplus and find it’s not exciting if it sits in an armory. Here’s a blog post that links a good Last Week Tonight from 2014 about it.
When all you have is an armored vehicle, high-powered rifles, and body armor, every problem looks like a brown-skinned terrorist.
9/11
Damn I forgot
We had 1 rule.
It’s wild to me that when the phone companies need to bill for a phone call they know exactly who to bill for it, but when it’s something like this everyone is helpless because you can’t track these things
Yeah, like did someone use the Captain Crunch whistle to make this call from a payphone?
Its crazy to me that people think its the telephone companies that need more regulations here and not the police. SWAT teams shouldn’t be going in guns blazing on anonymous calls and any injury or death should be solely their responsibility. By all means try to prosecute the people calling in the first case for misuse of emergency services, if you can identify them, but we all know who pulled the fucking trigger. Police can’t both get to decide that they get to selectively enforce the law and then take no responsibility when the injure or kill innocent people.
Police can’t both get to decide that they get to selectively enforce the law and then take no responsibility when the injure or kill innocent people.
SupremeExtreme Court: That’s where your wrong, bucko.
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So I don’t want to bother finding a place to put this where anyone who would do this would see it. I’ll just rant here.
Hey jackass. Let’s consider the events of christmas day. Smith family sits safely at home. There is no mention of Jack even being informed.
Meanwhile, a mother is having an over-text conversation with her cop husband about how they are missing each other on Christmas Day. Then the cop texts “got to run. another guy with a gun.”
Now the cop’s wife is at home holding her children with the routine and traumatic thought of “will my children see their dad again?”.
Summing up. Smith family fine. Cop family scared. You know a certain percentage of cops’ wives are very sympathetic individuals.
Its not the 40% being beaten by their husbands is it?
https://sites.temple.edu/klugman/2020/07/20/do-40-of-police-families-experience-domestic-violence/
