The internet is a dangerous place. There are hackers, predators, scammers, pedophiles and drug dealers lurking in the murky underbelly of the internet. There are terrorists who communicate and learn how to make bombs in the darkest recesses of the internet. There are human traffickers who sell sex slaves on the dark net.
And then, there are swatters.
If you watch Twitch.tv live streams, you probably know about swatting. For those of you who don’t, I’ll fill you in. Swatting is basically when someone online calls the police, claiming to be you, and threatens to kill someone or blow up a building or something along those lines. Obviously, the police have to take these threats seriously, so they send a SWAT team (hence the term ‘swatting’) out to your house, and you will ultimately be raided and detained at gunpoint.
Pretty messed up, right? Swatting is a plague in the Twitch community; below is a video of streamers being swatted on camera. Warning, the video contains profanity and police raids. Some readers may find it disturbing.
But swatting is not exclusive to streamers. Celebrities and executives and just plain old normal people fall victim to swatting; I can’t imagine the terror these victims must feel. Swatting is a potentially life-threatening situation. Though thankfully no one has been killed as a result of swatting, people have been killed in similar no-knock raids, including a 92-year-old grandmother. However horrifying those senseless and unnecessary deaths are, SWAT teams expect to be shot at in every house they raid, and rightfully so, considering the type of people they deal with. For victims of swatting, all it takes is one wrong move for their lives to end in a hail of gunfire.
Aside from the inherent danger that comes with the ‘prank’, swatting is a massive waste of police resources. Each SWAT team raid can cost thousands of dollars, and regardless of if you agree or disagree with the police (and the militarization of the police), we can all agree that that money and time that could go too far better things.
When swatters are caught (which, unfortunately, is not often due to encryption and VPNs), they can be handed harsh sentences. In 2009, a serial hacker and swatter was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison. Good. I think that’s great; hell, I think he should’ve been locked up for longer. People need to know how dangerous swatting really is.
Swatting just might be the worst thing you can do to someone over the internet; I can’t think of anything else on the web that can so directly endanger your life. It must end. It is a threat not only to the victim but to the public as a whole; with the police’s attention diverted, it leaves everyone else at higher risk. Indeed, swatting is an act of terrorism, and should be treated as such.
