http://patterico.com/2012/05/25/convicte....

Read that and don't let your jaw hit the ground. "SWATing" is when someone pretends to be you and calls the cops saying you just killed your spouse or some other murder, causing a platoon of armed police to swarm upon your house.

This happens when you're a blogger who*****es off the wrong people politically. Patterico above details the harrassment against him which climaxed in his "SWATing". These characters use the legal system to harass their targets, filing frivolous lawsuits, false criminal charges and all that crap.

It's been around for as long as cable telephone lines have existed.

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It's been around for as long as cable telephone lines have existed.

That's quite true, but today, when the police in this country is NO better than the Stasi , it's a much more dangerous scenario than it used to be.

Yep. When I say "cable", I mean bundled with service from a cable TV company, not traditional land lines. The first time I heard about this was about 13 years ago, IIRC. Some hackers figured out it was very easy to spoof a cable telephone call's source and had some 10 year old in Oregon convicted because the judge didn't understand the technology.

Listening to Glenn Beck, didn't hear the term SWATing, but that's part of the discussion.

The Blaze now has a big story about this up following Beck's interview:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/readymee....

They don't explain how this is done. To my knowledge it's only possible to do this by spoofing a cable phone number. That is THE reason I don't have a cable home phone line. Sometimes the TimeWarner staff will ask if I want cable phone, and I ask them if they're ****ing crazy. I ask them if they know their phones can be spoofed and people have been thrown in jail because of it. They reply incredulously, "Oh, that can't be true." That prompts me to subject them to a rant about how they need to understand the product their selling, forcing them to wait as I look up and read news stories to them about SWATing and cable phone line spoofing.

So yes, it can be done. That is why I don't have one of those phones.

Jota: It's not just cable phones that can do that.

So you can spoof cellular numbers too? I admittedly do not actively look into this stuff, just read whatever crosses my desk.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caller_ID_s....

In particular, check out the history section.

If you're a left wing terrorists they don't bother investigating you for stuff like this.

Reading through that, I searched and found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWATing

It looks like besides VOIP cable phones, there's paid services which allow you to spoof any number. I'd love to hear how that's legal.

There aren't any laws requiring caller id to be accurate.

Asi, and anyone else really interested.

One word, Phreaking

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phreaking

in the early 90's in my early teens I spent many hours hidden away behind those big green telephone transfer boxes you see in most neighborhoods. Any touch tone phone with alligator clips used in place of the traditional plug, and a walkman with tones taped on it is all you needed to access this world.

This is nothing new.

anyone remember John Draper, and the Free whistles in the Captain Crunch Box which produced the frequency of 2600 mhz which was the key to unlock the telephone network switches allowing you to rout your own calls. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper

This is a little different, but ya there were many ways to hack the system for free calls back then.

Not just "free" calls Jota.

Sorry dont feel comfortable saying more. Its out there if you really want to know.

Some damn fine engineering went into that cereal box whistle to make it produce a 2600 mhz tone!!!

Seriously, though, I don't understand the issue in this thread.

Why does the caller ID really matter? It seems that using a throwaway phone, i.e., without traceable caller ID, to call in a "just heard lots of shots and screams at address xxxxx as I was walking by" would also result in overwhelming LE response at the address you wanted to screw with.

The whole "I just shot my family" makes it a lot more likely that the cops will kill you.

Exactly Pete. Again this is nothing new. People have been calling in SWAT raids, now given the name SWATing by the MSM for glorification for decades now. Its no challenge to do it today. If you can fog a mirror, you can pull this off many ways with today's tech without any hacking, phreaking or Cracking.

Don't worry ! If you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear from the pigs

You guys know there are still pay phones, right?

Not in our area, there aren't.

Of course that could also be an ambush strategy.

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. . . there are still pay phones . . .

From what I've observed around my area, all seem to be in view of various surveillance cameras, e.g., gas stations, convenience stores, etc.

I wonder how many legitimate "anonymous tips" have NOT been given to LE trying to investigate various crimes specifically because one can't be assured of anonymity anymore.

Good point. There are some in Seattle at least, but they're rare enough I do a double take when I see one. I hadn't considered them being under observation, but (I must be getting old) I also hadn't considered using one for nefarious purpose.