Lock up the people calling in the fake threats, of course. But there also has to be a conversation about how anyone can summon armed men to anyone else’s house. Seems like it’s a bad enough problem that police departments should reconsider how they respond.
Police departments will of course respond that all of this is necessary as a precaution, but at a certain point it’s unsustainable and produces worse outcomes.
Each time they’re called out on a fake incident, they get to call it a successful resolution as a result of deploying their swat team. This then gives them an end of year that says “swat is highly effective in resolving situations”, which then allows a budgetary increase and more gear for the swat team.
I have been reading this thread for far too long, and this is the best comment. The one that explains my vast confusion as to why it could happen 47 times to one address.
Can I please put myself on this Do Not SWAT list? I’d be interested in putting myself on a Do Not Help list, too, if possible. Any police interaction brings with it a small probability of a deadly outcome. Would be nice to be able to opt out of their “help.”
Despite was sovern citizens may say, you can not opt-out of police services in the U.S. If you're well known on the Internet, let your local polic department know you may be targeted with swatting. It's worked for people in the past to soften the response. If you haven't already been swatted it's unlikely your profile is such that you'd be tarted.
Paranoid people are not allowed to opt out of police help because it is a negative externality to the neighbors and society for police to respond to reports of crime at a particular residence.
The police here only know three things - no knock raid with automatic weapons, not pulling over reckless drivers, and shooting unarmed black men. That is all they do.
And if the people calling in fake threats are doing so over hacked VOIP? It's not really like the old days where a phone meant you were somewhere in particular.
The particular elephant in the room is it is the cops get called to hundreds of locations (per department) per year that are actual violent confrontations, with domestic abuse being the most common type. That huge numbers of Americans are armed doesn't help the situation any.
> It's not really like the old days where a phone meant you were somewhere in particular.
The phone NEVER meant you were in a particular place. It was possible to route calls from switch to switch, and could even contact the operator posing as a line tech to have them make a connection for you. You must be too young to remember the good old days
The FCC mandates signatures to try to shift responsibility to call originators:
> The FCC requires that all voice service providers certify in the Robocall Mitigation Database that they have fully implemented STIR/SHAKEN or have instituted a robocall mitigation program to ensure that they are not originating illegal robocalls. To further protect consumers, gateway providers – those serving as the entry point for foreign calls into the United States – must both implement STIR/SHAKEN and institute a robocall mitigation program. All providers are required to submit to this public database the contact information for the personnel at their company responsible for robocall-mitigation related issues.
The FCC can mandate all they want, but if you keep finding people willing to sell you SS7 access under the table there is nothing the FCC can do about it.
Doing so should be the death penalty for the telco/telco's access to the network. I don't care if it's ATT, they'll shape up if this is seriously enforced.
Lock up the people responsible at the companies allowing anonymous VOIP calls to 911. If the ultimately responsible party is overseas or untraceable, the company at the end of what was able to be traced assumes responsibility.
They're not calling 911 over VOIP, they're calling the listed local police lines[0].
>The belief that these are false 911 calls or the narratives that these are 911 calls needs to change, because they’re not calling the 911 system. They’re not able to call 911. They’re calling the main line or the visible nonemergency number listed on the internet for a lot of these police departments and these dispatches.
This article explains the issue and is a good read.
I'd love to see the stats on real vs. fake reports on 911 vs. the local line, because it sounds dumb as hell to respond with SWAT to the local line.
Anyway, yeah, like the other commenter mentioned, treat the local police lines the same.
Actually, treat all calls to any number the same. Carriers should be required to understand provenance for every single call. All nuisance calls get fines or jail time. If the carrier cannot locate a responsible party, the carrier themselves are liable.
911 handles multiple non-police emergency services, though. Also, 911 is way easier to remember than a full local number, and works outside your home city.
I meant literally substitute "local non-emergency police line" for "911" in this comment:
"Lock up the people responsible at the companies allowing anonymous VOIP calls to 911"
It shouldn't matter if these spoofed calls are going to 911 or to the local non-emergency line. They shouldn't be sending swat for spoofed calls from other states. The comment I was responding to seemed to imply that there's some meaningful difference that the calls are coming through the local non-emergency line. There really shouldn't be any difference in terms of what response these spoofed calls generate.
As a sibling points out, they're using the local lines.
But you don't need anonymous VoIP. You just buy a burner phone with cash. In the US, carriers are required to route emergency calls even if the phone has no SIM card in it, or if you do have a SIM, but your phone can only see a carrier network you don't have permission to use. The idea being emergencies trump silly things like whether or not you've paid your phone bill or picked the "right" carrier for that location. Or if, say, your SIM card got damaged or dislodged in the accident that caused you to need emergency services.
And I think this is a good thing. But it's of course a vector for abuse, too.
I read that interview. They also think it is ridiculous to respond with SWAT to those local line calls. But companies should be liable for those as well. Let's have accountability. Let's make them liable for all calls that they don't fully understand the origin of.
If swatters had to buy burner phones instead of using a free trial on a VOIP service, first of all the price and effort would put this out of range for the typical teenage griefer. Furthermore then the phone call itself would be traceable to a cell tower so people who did a number of these could be tracked down and prosecuted. I think a carrier tracing back to a physical device could fulfill what I am asking for.
Edit: also, similar to how I feel about the payphones comment; let's simply not send a SWAT team out when the caller is nowhere near the area of the reported crime.
You know what would be a great policy? Not sending SWAT teams when the call reporting whatever situation is coming from a phone physically on the other side of the state.
> When smoking move out of bars most bars seemed to close.
Pretty good outcome, IMO. If you can't make money without giving all your customers cancer, even if they don't smoke... maybe you shouldn't be in business.
Almost 20 years ago I got to talking to a sheriff in Texas who lamented that no one ever showed up to the boring important domestic disturbance calls. But when there was a call where there was even a slight chance a Taser could be deployed the squad cars were lined up in droves.
So I'm confused here. The poster you're responding to here says "this shouldn't work the way that it currently does" and your response is "this currently does work that way"? Like are you saying a change in police response policy is self-evidently impossible? If not, what are you trying to say?
Ostensibly a government service is supposed to be modifiable by the will of the electorate or someone representing it. Of course we don't expect them to relinquish power voluntarily. When people propose changing policy to modify how an organization behaves, they generally do not mean by asking them nicely to please do it differently
Police departments will of course respond that all of this is necessary as a precaution, but at a certain point it’s unsustainable and produces worse outcomes.