Gamers/Streamers Swatting Megathread

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FoRiZon

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http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...ng-prankster-famed-god-arrested-in-las-vegas/

A 19-year-old Las Vegas teen is expected to appear in court Monday, days after being arrested in connection to a July swatting incident in suburban Illinois.

famedgod-300x403.jpg

Brandon Wilson
Will County state's attorney's office
Brandon Wilson, who goes by the online handle "Famed God," was arrested Thursday in Nevada and faces an extradition hearing to determine whether he should be sent to face hacking and other charges. Illinois prosecutors said there was evidence on his computers about the July 10 swatting incident, in which he allegedly reported a murder to Naperville's emergency 911 line. The SWAT team responded, but the call was a hoax.

The Chicago-Sun Times said that, in addition to the Naperville incident, the suspect's computers held evidence "of similar incidents across the country."

The teen's arrest coincidently came the same day as a popular online gamer, Joshua Peters, aka Koopatroopa787, was swatted while thousands were watching him live stream on Twitch.

Swatting has seemingly become a national phenomenon in the online gaming world, with pranksters calling police and claiming that heinous crimes are underway at a certain location. That usually prompts armed SWAT teams to arrive at the scene. Often, the prank call appears to be coming from the innocent target's address.

"Famed God," meanwhile, is also said to have hacked the gaming consoles owned by two others and threatened to put somebody "in debt for life" by accessing banking information. Illinois prosecutors said charges Wilson faces include computer tampering, intimidation, and identity theft. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison.
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The incident:
http://kotaku.com/guy-swatted-in-front-of-60-000-viewers-while-playing-ru-1684572290

http://www.twitch.tv/koopatroopa787/v/3760948



His Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/koopatroopa787
 
It's when you call the police and falsely report an extremely dangerous situation that only a SWAT team would be able to deal with. It's popular to do it to streamers because people get to see the situation live.

I hope he serves the full 5 years. He deserves all of it.
 
They should have made it 15 years.

This causes trouble for the SWAT team thinking is this another bogus call and just a gamer and not a real threat?
Causes issues for the state as they have to pay compensation
The possibility of someone being killed
 
@BobK I was just as clueless, but somehow proud that I was.

The acting in the OP video is just weird to watch. I'm not sure that the people on both sides here fully understand what's real and what's not.
 
I watched the OP video before looking into "swatting" and honestly thought it was fake. If it's not fake it's a little bizarre to say the least, IMO of course.
 
LeMansAid
@BobK I was just as clueless, but somehow proud that I was.

The acting in the OP video is just weird to watch. I'm not sure that the people on both sides here fully understand what's real and what's not.
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Would you like it if I called the police on you hoping that you get shot, or, even worse, killed by SWAT just to get off? Let's take it one step further and ask would you like it if I told you before hand that I will put your family under so much debt that not even your life insurance policy would cover the debt?

That is precisely what happened to this streamer by some punk who thinks that they can get their jollies by swatting him, and taking it the step further by threatening to put his father under so much debt that he can't repay. I am not surprised by the result.
 
I don't think some people understand how Serious and Dangerous Swatting is. It isn't just SWATs thinking it was you then after you clear your name, they leave. There is a lot more harm into this but they were all said by @Sanji Himura
 
@Sanji Himura That seems much like a random rant in respect to responding to my words.

As it turns out though, I've had stalkers and death threats of a serious nature throughout quite an amount of my life. I have people I've never met or even seen approach me with their ire showing, convinced that we are meant to "be together", but that I've left them out in the cold. I know a bit about what the real world is, and what is not. One does not encourage living in the real world in others by living outside of it themselves. The video is flagrantly manufactured and forced in my opinion, regardless of what the true emotions are.

I find that when someone captures truth of emotion in a video, it's utterly engaging and often heartbreaking. When it's painfully forced as this one comes across to me it tends to reek of them placing their persona, their internet character, in front of truth of emotion.
 
LeMansAid
@Sanji Himura That seems much like a random rant in respect to responding to my words.

As it turns out though, I've had stalkers and death threats of a serious nature throughout quite an amount of my life. I have people I've never met or even seen approach me with their ire showing, convinced that we are meant to "be together", but that I've left them out in the cold. I know a bit about what the real world is, and what is not. One does not encourage living in the real world in others by living outside of it themselves. The video is flagrantly manufactured and forced in my opinion, regardless of what the true emotions are.

I find that when someone captures truth of emotion in a video, it's utterly engaging and often heartbreaking. When it's painfully forced as this one comes across to me it tends to reek of them placing their persona, their internet character, in front of truth of emotion.
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I wasn't quite sure how to phrase it, but I think this is it. 👍👍 I'm sure the incident happened and I'm sure it was all very traumatic, but the feeling I get is that it isn't the real guy talking from his guy in the video, it's him trying to "act" the way he thinks his viewers want him to act and what he thinks will work best on his channel. He's overthought it and now it's forced or scripted emotion, instead of real and from the heart. Or so it appears to me.
 
Pseudopod
I hope he serves the full 5 years. He deserves all of it.
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Grayfox
They should have made it 15 years.
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Blitz24
How about 25 years, and required payment to compensate for wasting everyone's time?
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Death Penalty! :lol:

In all seriousness, many police forces have demonstrated dangerous aggression and disregard for safety. The amount of innocent people hurt or killed due to botched raids makes this a very serious crime.
 
Zenith
In all seriousness, many police forces have demonstrated dangerous aggression and disregard for safety. The amount of innocent people hurt or killed due to botched raids makes this a very serious crime.
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It's true.

If the rate of fake calls is relatively high, then the SWAT teams then need to change how they approach situations to account for the reasonable chance that there's no crime at all in progress. That potentially means that more people are harmed while the SWAT team fluffs around establishing that there is actually a crime in progress.

On the other hand, if the SWAT team doesn't change their tactics to account for a high rate of fake calls, then there's potentially people being injured or killed as a result of the SWAT team aggressively entering an area with no crime in progress.

Either way, it's bad for the overall success rate of SWAT callouts. The best result is that the SWAT teams can trust that the vast majority of the calls are real, and the SWAT team can go and do their job without messing around. That means throwing the book at people like this guy phoning in fake calls for ***** and giggles.

Sometimes mistakes are going to be made, but that's the price you pay for quick response in a REAL life-and-death situation. We don't need people like this neckbeard making it worse.

P.S. I find it entertaining that he actually has a neckbeard. I thought that was just a joke and that no real person would actually do that...
 
Imari
It's true.

If the rate of fake calls is relatively high, then the SWAT teams then need to change how they approach situations to account for the reasonable chance that there's no crime at all in progress. That potentially means that more people are harmed while the SWAT team fluffs around establishing that there is actually a crime in progress.

On the other hand, if the SWAT team doesn't change their tactics to account for a high rate of fake calls, then there's potentially people being injured or killed as a result of the SWAT team aggressively entering an area with no crime in progress.

Either way, it's bad for the overall success rate of SWAT callouts. The best result is that the SWAT teams can trust that the vast majority of the calls are real, and the SWAT team can go and do their job without messing around. That means throwing the book at people like this guy phoning in fake calls for ***** and giggles.

Sometimes mistakes are going to be made, but that's the price you pay for quick response in a REAL life-and-death situation. We don't need people like this neckbeard making it worse.

P.S. I find it entertaining that he actually has a neckbeard. I thought that was just a joke and that no real person would actually do that...
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How does one differentiate between a fake and a real call until you bust into the building and find out what's going on?
 
Johnnypenso
How does one differentiate between a fake and a real call until you bust into the building and find out what's going on?
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That's the point.

You know afterwards, but you don't know before so you have to plan your strategy based on statistics. A population in which the SWAT teams can rely on information being not actively misleading is almost certainly going to see less mishaps and poor outcomes than a population in which the SWAT teams have to also deal with prank calls, all other things being equal.

Hence, throwing the book. It's essentially the same reasons that pranking 911/your local emergency number gets penalised, you're crippling a system that's there to help people in serious situations for your own personal amusement. Except that the worst case scenario of a SWAT team raid going wrong is quite a bit worse than a call for two cops in a car going wrong.
 
Who would be such a pr**k that they would do something like this, not only are you endangering this streamer but also endangering people from the calls the SWAT need to be responding to
 
@LeMansAid: My apologies if I came across as griping at everything and anything. I have just found out this week that my mother has cancer and my reaction got to the point where I asked Jordan to put me in the cooler for three days while I came to grips with it.
 
Imari
It's true.

If the rate of fake calls is relatively high, then the SWAT teams then need to change how they approach situations to account for the reasonable chance that there's no crime at all in progress. That potentially means that more people are harmed while the SWAT team fluffs around establishing that there is actually a crime in progress.

On the other hand, if the SWAT team doesn't change their tactics to account for a high rate of fake calls, then there's potentially people being injured or killed as a result of the SWAT team aggressively entering an area with no crime in progress.

Either way, it's bad for the overall success rate of SWAT callouts. The best result is that the SWAT teams can trust that the vast majority of the calls are real, and the SWAT team can go and do their job without messing around. That means throwing the book at people like this guy phoning in fake calls for ***** and giggles.

Sometimes mistakes are going to be made, but that's the price you pay for quick response in a REAL life-and-death situation. We don't need people like this neckbeard making it worse.

P.S. I find it entertaining that he actually has a neckbeard. I thought that was just a joke and that no real person would actually do that...
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Hey you don't let a bull sit in a cage, that testosterone builds up. Gotta let the bull out (swat teams) once in a while, even if there is no action and it's just a ruse.


^ SARCASM

I agree with you though, I recently had an unpleasant experience with local police (for both of us) due to someone calling and reporting something that was not happening at my home. So I can understand where this guy is coming from and it's annoying that people have nothing better to do then play childish tricks that could have life altering effects.
 
I'm with Greyfox and Blitz... 5 years is too light a sentence. I'm honestly shocked that nobody's gotten killed from this swatting nonsense yet. It's only a matter of time before footage from a swatting ends up on Best Gore.
 
There's an article on kotaku from yesterday that discusses the mentality around why one teenager did (still does?) swatting. Their excuse is two fold. That it's so easy to obtain the information from websites and companies like Amazon and Verizon (since the companies don't actually check who is calling and thus use social engineering to exploit the companies). The second thing he said was it's fun to intimidate others.

Really, so the gist of it is that you are essentially a hacktavist hiding your dangerous game behind a goal of improving security? I doubt any of those doing this care about anyone's safety and they don't understand how reckless it is. It's like firing a gun in a movie theater and blaming security for not confiscating the gun. Where do they learn these things and better yet, how can it be corrected?
 


Just some more examples on how serious and scary this is. 'Up to five years' isn't enough to pay off the waste of resources, time, and the mental (or even physical) health on the victims.
 
They don't care. These people don't care about others. They just care about scaring innocent people for their own personal enjoyment.
 
I wonder if this would rapidly die off if the greater stream population took to suspending the stream when there is a significant interruption.

That video above is basically what the people behind this want. Replace that with a screen that says "one moment please" and plays elevator music, and then if possible when it's all over go back to playing like nothing happened and I'd think the pleasure the criminals get out of it would be greatly reduced or removed entirely.

Were I possibly at risk for this, that would be my strategy.
 
Exorcet
I wonder if this would rapidly die off if the greater stream population took to suspending the stream when there is a significant interruption.

That video above is basically what the people behind this want. Replace that with a screen that says "one moment please" and plays elevator music, and then if possible when it's all over go back to playing like nothing happened and I'd think the pleasure the criminals get out of it would be greatly reduced or removed entirely.

Were I possibly at risk for this, that would be my strategy.
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This would only work if the streamers are fully aware at that any moment their house could be raided by SWAT teams.

Also, I mentioned an article earlier, here is the link to it:
http://kotaku.com/meet-a-teenager-who-says-hes-a-swatter-1686128721
 
Exorcet
That video above is basically what the people behind this want. Replace that with a screen that says "one moment please" and plays elevator music
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A lot more streamers have started doing this lately every time they get up to use the bathroom, get a drink, ect. They turn off a webcam if they have one and mute their microphone. Though if they get swatted, I'm not sure if they would even feel like streaming after that depending on how serious it is. There's been cases where there would only be about a cop or two just checking out the house, and there's been cases where 8, 9, 10 SWAT units run in and do their routine.
It's a good idea, though it's not 'bullet proof'.
 
Blitz24
This would only work if the streamers are fully aware at that any moment their house could be raided by SWAT teams.
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I wouldn't think they'd need to be on edge constantly. From my own experience with streaming (in no way popular or professional) I can stock recording with a single click. If I had this threat in mind, and heard something unusual like loud knocking at my door, I could possibly prevent the entire scene from being broadcast by hitting one button.

Pinkintron
I'm not sure if they would even feel like streaming after that depending on how serious it is.
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Yes, that's the thing. However if you could, it would be better to ignore it completely. It would destroy the entire motivation behind the crime.
 

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