Heavily armed cops raid IM chat

@ James Butler

Disregard for a moment whether SWAT teams are trigger happy.

If I convince the SWAT team that a very dangerous situation has occured - a home invasion by AK47 wielding madmen - and direct the SWAT team at an unsuspecting and un-invaded household, then I am perpetrating an assault on that household as well as upon the cops.

I don't know what that assault is called by the legal code. I do know it is the kind of behaviour that got one a trip to the principal's office some 30 years ago. Merely now it involves dupes - the cops - with loaded guns, and victims - the household - who might be expected to lose their cool when the cops come crashing in. The possible result is not hard to imagine.

How exactly is the state covering it's ass? The state is as much a victim in this as is the household, as is civil society. This kind of thing should be dealt with very harshly indeed in the courts.

As for that old chestnut about 'ethical hacking', forget it, you're not allowed to yell 'Fire' in a theatre either, despite the obvious deficiencies in theatre exit door capacity.

@By James Butler

"assault with an assault weapon by proxy"

Um if go back to the original article the assault weapon was an m16 not an AK. California has a list of what the consider assault weapons. M16, AK are on that list

Terminology

"Social engineering" is the commonly accepted term for techniques involving the exploitation of humans, rather than computers. Respectable or not, using a euphemism won't make it go away.

Morons...

I hope that the people responsible are someday under real armed assault and desperately in need of a SWAT team, who will be unfortunately busy raiding my gran's house due to reports of Semtex in her cookie jar.

This is a seriously stupid past-time and will get someone killed eventually.

@Terminology

I think you'll find that it's "social engineering" which is the euphemism - mainly for simply lying.

We have our own version over here

We have our own version over here where kids and scumbags with too much time on their hands have discovered that if they remove the SIM from their mobile phones, that they can still dial 112, and direct the emergency services pretty much where-ever they like. It might not be a SWAT team- but a firebrigade or an ambulance on a false call-out, when there is a massive fire or a person in desperate need of assistance elsewhere is everybit as bad as having a SWAT team at some innocent person's door....... The old favourite was using a handheld marine VHF radio and calling the coast guard. There were a spate of calls for a number of years from the Wexford area which resulted on a number of occasions on the Irish Alouette helicopters or the RAF from Wales being scrambled on hoax calls. Jailing the scumbags who abuse emergency services is too good for them......

swat teams not

trigger happy usually they are better trained and less afraid than your average policemen is when going to a residence (there are more of them and they are better armed). Scared people shoot more often, for less provocation, on the other hand there is enough chance for a tragic mistake to warrant jailing these pranking bastards for a long time and I hope that is what happens.

Assault

If I put my hand in my pocket and say it is a gun, it is assault with deadly weapon in the US. Making someone believe (the police) there was an AK is sufficient.

Also, _unauthorized_ access to a computer has been a crime here for a while.

Steve Roper

Understood - my point is that they should call it what it is, and if El Reg must use the term, at least do so with irony rather than playing on the criminals' gameboard.