HN Reader

From the Information he pled to:

    ALAN W. FILION,
        a/k/a "Nazgul Swattings,"
        a/k/a "Torswats V3,"
        a/k/a "Third Reich of Kiwiswats,"
        a/k/a "The Table Swats,"
        a/k/a "Angmar," and
        a/k/a "Torswats"

Seems like a fun guy. It looks like most of this story was covered a year ago:

https://www.wired.com/story/alan-filion-torswats-swatting-ar...

"Could"? Absolutely should.

> from approximately August 2022 to January 2024, Filion made more than 375 swatting and threat calls, including calls in which he claimed to have planted bombs in the targeted locations or threatened to detonate bombs and/or conduct mass shootings at those locations.

( from https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/california-teenager-pleads-gu... )

The militarization of law enforcement and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

In Europe this would have been a completely different story. It's highly unlikely (compared to the US) that a SWAT team equivalent would kill anyone. The guy could have got away with 5-7 years max. I know it's a museum, but I prefer to live here.

I've made this comment before but technology could help here. If the call was tagged as landline, cell, or VoIP along with approximate location info it would help a lot.

A landline call tagged as "same town" or cell call tagged as "pinged tower near reported location" could be treated more seriously than a VoIP call from "Fly-by-night VoIP Gateway Plc".

this is a police problem. as usual.

It should really not be possible for a single anonymous phone call to dispatch a heavily armed response team to break down someone's door.

Aside from that, people who do so are despicable. 20 years is a light sentence. Taking money to put people in situations that could easily become deadly.

the linked article is very light on details, here is a better one:

https://www.wired.com/story/alan-filion-torswats-guilty-plea...

Does swatting only exist in the US? By swatting I mean “causing life threatening police action to innocent people by giving false information to said police”.

Okay so like, genuinely not trying to do a "back in my day" fuckin thing here, but also: what the fuck is wrong with kids? Back when I was coming up, pranking at it's absolute worst was like, filling a dudes shoes with yogurt in the locker room, or like, putting plastic bugs in people's desks n shit. Why the fuck are teenagers trying to get each other murdered by cops!?

> In January 2024, an individual affiliated with the Torswats Telegram account and claiming to be a friend of Filion suggested that he was part of a group aiming to incite racial violence and that he sought money to “buy weapons and commit a mass shooting.” The allegation aligns with a written tip, placed to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center in April 2023 and obtained by WIRED, alleging that the person behind the Torswats account was involved in a neo-Nazi cult known as the Order of Nine Angles.

I wonder if this was supposed to be Nine Angels. Copy editing on the web is so sloppy that I'm going to assume so because it makes more sense (to me).

Wow, neo-nazis are a fun bunch. Their ideas about accelerationism and trying to induce race riots have got to be our biggest semi-organized domestic threat. It's encouraging to see authorities seemingly beginning to catch on to this, as well as widespread recognition of what swatting is. Five years ago was a very different story, especially on the latter.

It looks like the 20 years is a theoretical maximum. Isn't it pretty rare for anyone to ever get the maximum sentence?

Couldn’t this fellow been identified after ten, rather than 200+?

This type of behavior is why I am so adamant about not doxxing myself on the internet. I had a belligerent internet-goer track me down last year through some open profiles. Luckily, they were the non-swatting type, and it allowed me to fix the gaps. It sucks to live in fear of these people.

Also, HN seems to have a bad echo chamber on both policing and gun control.

Not sure why swatting isn’t treated like attempted murder

And that's not even enough time.

You could get 10 year olds to make these calls for you and there would be no legal repercussions.

I'd be interested to know if any actual SWAT operations happened from these calls. I know that it does happen sometimes.

I always thought that SWATting was done by a foreign adversary to try to make people lose faith in their government. Guess I was wrong.

> "According to court records, Filion was also part of a high-profile international swatting group that targeted several prominent figures"

...or was I right?

Good

I'm unwisely and unadvisedly wading into this half-cocked.

Swatting wouldn't even be a thing if <any number of logical things>

- Anonymous calls should be treated with high levels of suspicion as to their legitimacy

- First response training that's even moderately appropriate

- Situational awareness beyond what one's been informed by third parties

- Empathy for all humans

- Any kind of notion of that a scenario may not actually be as described by a single anonymous voice

A very (un)funny irony is that there are numerous stories I've read about domestic violence victims being arrested, as opposed to the attacker, which implies there's some level of suspicion in some circumstances about the information the police are being fed. Swatting, as a thing, indicates there's some kind of hero-pressure build-up that overrules any kind of <all the things I listed above> whereby that pressure has the possibility of impending release.