Swatting suspects charged with subverting Ring doorbell cams and calling cops Two men have been charged with an alleged week-long US swatting spree in which they used stolen Yahoo email credentials to break into Ring door cameras, livestream the events on social media, and then taunt responding police officers. One of the two men, Kya Christian Nelson, aka "ChumLul," 21, of Racine, Wisconsin, is already …
It's there, it's just that the charges aren't detailed:
If convicted, they each face a maximum of five years in federal prison for the conspiracy charges, while Nelson faces an additional seven years for the other counts related to the swatting spree.
I note that "swatting" isn't a new thing, and I can't recall anybody being pursued with quite so much vigour before. I think the clue to the enthusiasm and efficiency of the authorities in this case is in the phrase verbally taunt responding police officers. Innocent people being threatened at gunpoint is one thing, but failing to "Repect mah authoritah!" is an altogether more serious matter.
One of them was in prison already: That suggests the police had access to his computer and phone and found some evidence of these crimes and followed it up to catch the other guy, too. Emails, phone calls: The usual.
So I'm not so convinced this was followed up with vigour: More likely it was just stumbled upon as part of a follow up investigation.
In US the police all have guns. In US there are too many guns, thus making the first point necessary. These unfortunate facts have been in place for quite a while. I'm amazed at your amazement.
BTW: Someone recently made an observation as follows: "I don’t think our plan to have a society made up of 300 million rugged individualists is going well."
>In US the police all have guns
Which is just unnecessary these days. Instead of calling 911 and have the police send a unit to shoot the target we could have a simple phone menu system linked to precision artillery.
Press 1 for high explosive, 2 for armoured piercing
Thank you, please enter the coordinates of the address press pound when finished.
If you have a Ring doorbell you stuck a badly designed surveillance device on the front of your house that shares its video footage with the cops (paid for using your tax money). The fact that the cops love these makes it doubly delicious that they'd get taunted by their own spy devices.
Victims sometimes get killed by trigger-happy pigs when they're SWATted, so I probably should tut tut, but since nobody actually got hurt that I can tell, it's rather hilarious.
so you would find it hilarious if your wife and kids are woken at 2AM by a squad of armed police shouting and booting the door in? Not aure I find it hilarious.
What about if it was the neighbours house and the swat teams used your lawn, fence and back yard to go piling through?
Doesnt sound like fun to me. I assume you have never seen such an operation in effect. You might have a lot of bravado now but it isnt like the movies and is a lot more scary in real life. Especially if you have your own kids who are crying in terror.
The fun part is watching the system eating itself. People suffering for the cause an unfortunate side effect that your media has conveniently immunised us to.
I've no doubt it's possible to get armed police to bash down a stranger's door outside the US but you guys make it SO EASY. Now it's all coming out and your police are caught with their trousers* down, exposing the executive branch for what it is. Big Tech getting a kicking is the delicious icing on top. And we all get to watch. Where's the popcorn?
[*] Sorry, pants. Or is that panties?
Cho'Gall > Cho'Hag!
For the Swarm!
I mean horde!!!
Btw I loved that series by Edding.
Silk is my favorite character (probably kind of obvious I guess) and then the knight whose name begins with M.
I swear it's Mandorellan? I knew it was close to the Star Wars nomenclature.
If you have a Ring doorbell you stuck a badly designed surveillance device on the front of your house that shares its video footage with the cops (paid for using your tax money). The fact that the cops love these makes it doubly delicious that they'd get taunted by their own spy devices.
A simple solution. LEO's can jump into the Ring as soon as the crime is reported to start collecting intelligence. Or they can hop onto the Prime Crime channel, select 'crimes in progress' and join the watch party. Then to improve public safety, homeowners Rings will be stretched by integrating Alexa and internal cameras. This sensor integration will obviously greatly improve public safety and resource allocation.
Kinda suprised Amazon hasn't already included a 360 degree camera in Alexa hardware (or have they?) given the potential value of the footage it could capture.
If you've never been on the wrong end of an armed police house raid (drug raid at a wrong address) in the US, you don't know how close you can come to dying due to "stupidity". The police are shouting to shock-and-awe you into compliance (they're trained to do that), but, they are all shouting different things. "Freeze!" "Get on the ground, now!" "Put your hands above your head!" etc. The officers are all adrenalized and twitchy, but because they disagree on what you are supposed to do, anything you do, or do not do, can be viewed as the 'wrong' thing and can result in you being shot. And, it's not even as clear as I wrote above: all I heard was a stream of loud, random syllables; I wasn't able to mentally process what I heard, because I was adrenalized and scared as fuck.
Don't know if I'd go that far, but it is time for people to grow up and stop treating prison rape as a joke or an appropriate form of punishment, rather than as a reprehensible crime and inexcusable failure of an already broken-by-design incarceration system.
The US, at both the Federal and State levels, likes to officially pretend its prison system is rehabilitatory (albeit with a tendency to use the rather sinister term "corrections") and unofficially celebrate it as punitive, when it's mostly institutionalized racism and government-controlled slavery. Changing that starts with assuming (and saying) it ought to be better, rather than celebrating its flaws.
Two of my neighbors have Ring cameras. They have videos of a guy who breaks into our mailboxes. The police can't do anything.
I have a few Simple questions:
1. Is the username/password combo the only authentication required?
2. What is the data retention policy when the video is shared with the police?
3. Is there a right to be able to get a copy of the data?
4. Are the police or private companies mining the data?
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