taiwanluthiers Posted September 2, 2014 Posted September 2, 2014 I don't know if you have heard, but recently there has been a string of prank known as "swatting" The prank involves using various methods including hacking, using teletype services, etc. to mask the caller's phone number, and then of course finding the victim's address. The prankster then calls the police claiming hostage situation, bomb threats, or whatever in order to get the SWAT teams to respond to the victim's house. Oftentimes the prankster would be watching through a webcam so he could get the whole thing on video... I can't say this enough, but for any pyro this is going to be very dangerous. It means if you are not above board with regards to legality, you could end up in a lot of trouble if you got swatted for whatever reason. Scary world out there!
MWJ Posted September 3, 2014 Posted September 3, 2014 Informative! I guess some people have nothing better to do but to interfere in other peoples lives.
taiwanluthiers Posted September 3, 2014 Author Posted September 3, 2014 It's serious enough for the FBI to say something about it: http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2013/september/the-crime-of-swatting-fake-9-1-1-calls-have-real-consequences/the-crime-of-swatting-fake-9-1-1-calls-have-real-consequences The perp often gets a very harsh sentence if caught... after all it's a huge amount of wasted public resource. Although the report of a 15 year old getting a 25 year sentence is a hoax, someone did get 11 years for swatting. I think authorities are refusing to publicize these incidents because they don't want to encourage copycats.
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