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.
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.
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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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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.
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Citation needed.
Even if I granted the US gov as being all seeing, a major problem is that it requires local PD/prosecutors to get the feds involved.
I’m not actually on board with attacking this via phone system regulations, but It is fairly easy to make anonymous phone calls using the techniques I pointed out. To actually fix something like this, you’d need every phone number to be registered in person with a star card and to completely outlaw virtual numbers providers with stiff penalties. But even then, there’s the issue of international numbers and illegally spoofing a number. Those can’t be fixed without revamping the telcos which is really hard with the amount of ossified tech in place.
This probably won’t happen in my lifetime, but the two things that need to happen are reducing gun ownership and demilitarization of the police. Cops are way too trigger happy, actual consequences when cops murder or harm individuals would go a long way in stopping them from perceiving everyone as an enemy combatant. Pulling guns off the streets would reduce the justifications of busting down doors with a dozen cops ready to shoot anything that moves.
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Dude, I just responded to you and did not downvote, calm down. Maybe take some of your own advice about anger?
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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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.
It’s because the cops get to play soldier without any actual training.
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.
No, it’s not a solution, it’s a goal.
A solution would be planned systems of oversight and accountability that achieves the goal.
They’ll get whoever did this. The feds don’t take getting messed with lightly
So far I’ve not ever seen any news articles about people calling in a swatting getting caught, but plenty of articles on swatting.
What makes you so confident that the rancid basement troll that did this will face consequences?
People get arrested for swatting all the time
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.
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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.
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.
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It actually could be very hard to find the perpetrator with overseas VPNs and VOIP phone numbers that can be spoofed.
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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.
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