Swatting is a criminal harassment tactic of deceiving an emergency service (via such means as hoaxing an emergency services dispatcher) into sending a police and emergency service response team to another person’s address. This is triggered by false reporting of a serious law enforcement emergency, such as a bomb threat, murder, hostage situation, or other alleged incidents. It can also be triggered by a false report of a “mental health” emergency, such as reporting that a person is allegedly suicidal or homicidal and may or may not be armed. In the United States, the maximum prison sentence handed down by a court in March 2019 on a swatter was 20 years in jail for a fatal 2017 swatting violation.
The term derives from the law enforcement unit “SWAT” (special weapons and tactics), a specialized type of police unit in many countries, carrying military-style equipment such as door breaching weapons, submachine guns, automatic rifles and sniper rifles. A threat may result in the evacuations of schools and businesses. Advocates have called for swatting to be described as terrorism due to its use to intimidate and create the risk of injury or death.
Making false reports to emergency services is a criminal offense in many countries, punishable by fines and imprisonment. It causes tax dollars to be wasted by the city or county when responding to a false report of a serious law enforcement emergency. In California, swatters bear the “full cost” of the response which can be up to $10,000.
Common Swatting Method
Caller ID spoofing, social engineering, TTY, prank calls and phone phreaking techniques may be variously combined by swatting perpetrators. 911 systems (including computer telephony systems and human operators) have been tricked by calls placed from cities hundreds of miles away from the location of the purported call, or even from other countries. The caller typically places a 911 call using a spoofed phone number (so as to hide the fraudulent caller’s real location) with the goal of tricking emergency authorities into responding with a SWAT team to a fabricated emergency.
Swatting is linked to the action of doxxing, which is obtaining and broadcasting, often via the Internet, the address and details of an individual with an intent to harass or endanger them.
Source: Wikipedia
