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from the more-than-just-a-40-year-old-TV-series dept.
Three months after she introduced the Internet Swatting Hoax Act in US Congress, Representative Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) found herself at the end of an apparent swatting attempt on Sunday night.
Melrose, Massachusetts police press spokesperson John Guilfoil confirmed to Ars Technica that the department received a phone call from "a computerized voice, not a natural voice" alleging "shots fired" and an "active shooter" at the address of Clark's home. The resulting police report confirmed an incident time of 9:57pm for a "life alert alarm" and "automated call reporting shooter."
This type of police report—using a disguised voice to allege false threats at a residence—is known as "swatting," due to the likelihood that police departments will react by sending SWAT teams to respond to serious-sounding threats. In the case of the Sunday night call, however, Guilfoil confirmed that Melrose police followed "established protocols" to choose a de-escalated response of normal police officers, though the officers in question blocked traffic on both ends of Clark's street with patrol cars. Guilfoil was unable to clarify whether weapons were drawn at the scene, and he did not answer our other questions about the incident, particularly those about the nature of the phone call received, "due to the ongoing nature of the investigation."
(Score: 4, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday February 04 2016, @06:41PM
You DO understand that "black lives matter" does not mean "no other lives do though, right?"
The common counter "all lives matter" is a tautology; true but vacuous. All houses should be hosed down if they are on fire, too, but only an idiot would respond to a fire alarm by dousing a house in the next state because "all houses matter." See how that works?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday February 04 2016, @08:03PM
Crap. I was afraid I was putting my foot in my mouth there.
Sure, in set theory that's good and all. I'm sure that nobody is saying white lives don't matter, just as this rep is not saying male SWATing victims don't matter. However, the construction is exclusionary and divisive. It also demonstrates that Clark is really not concerned about male SWATing victims, but we'll never hear her actually own up to that. Men do not exist in her world outside of incidents of a man doing something bad to a woman. She doesn't mean any harm, but she also doesn't care what men to do each other, and if a woman does something to a man, “he had it coming.”
I would compare her to a racist white person who never says anything overtly racist, but black people don't exist in their world except when a black person does something bad to a white person. These kinds of racists are fine with being oblivious to the larger problems, and if it's a black person attacking a black person, meh, that's just how black people are.
Here's my chain of thought:
1. Is the rep a sexist asshole? Yes
2. Does this affect me? No, because I do not SWAT or harass people on the internet. Well, except MikeeUSA, but it's all in good fun.
I mean, they can pass a bazillion laws about SWATing women and I'll never be affected. Then as we start going into harassment territory and it gets murky. Nobody knows exactly what harassment is. Stating a difference of opinion could be harassment. Over on the other site, somebody became convinced I regularly pressure women into having sex with me after being triggered by “somebody disagrees with me about rape cultures.” I don't even date women! Then the next step after the media has thoroughly established that all men are sexual harassers chasing women off the internet may be to go full “harassment culture.” Let's use those questions again as concerns rape cultures:
1. Is the presenter a sexist asshole? Yes
2. Does this affect me? Yes, because it does not matter whether or not I rape people. At a minimum, it has wasted an hour or two of my time and made it very clear to me that I am in a hostile environment where, if I anger the wrong woman, all it takes is an accusation, and the burden of proof that I did not have sex with her is on me simply because of my assigned gender. Oh well. Pick a better college next time and/or file a gender discrimination lawsuit if there's no way to avoid rape cultures.
They are not saying that male rape victims do not matter. What they are saying is that if you were assigned the male gender at birth, “We want you to understand that we will be openly hostile towards you and that the 2 hours of your time we wasted do not matter.”
Now, college campuses are kind of “special.” That's not news. This is a bit out there into tinfoil hat land, but what I do not want is to try to connect to the internet one day and be required to sit through an hour or two presentation about “harassment culture” before I can change my legal gender and never worry about official sanctioned sexism again.
Finally, to come back around to #blacklivesmatter (because they do!):
1. Is the presenter a racist asshole? No. And people are being murdered by the police because they have the wrong skin color.
2. Does this affect me? Not likely, although Bernie Sanders might be slightly irritated with them. On the other hand, I worry about black people I know.
There's also the problem that I cannot tell you objectively what is and is not harassment. I just know it when I see it. Men also frequently fail to report harassment (and rape/domestic violence/etc). So already our numbers are hopelessly tainted. We're talking about the problem in terms of sexist language. “Men” are doing things to “women!” On top of questionable data, the unspoken assumption is that none of these harassers could possibly be women.
We can state this without using sexist language. Anonymous assholes may or may not display asshole behavior disproportionately towards women. Now it no longer affects me, since I am not an asshole. (Well, that might be debatable, but whatever.)
However, I can objectively tell you when a SWATing occurs. Does nobody have the numbers and demographic breakdowns? We need at least four categories and male and female numbers for each: number of SWAT attempts per year (SWAT team/police dispatched, median amount of property damage during a successful SWAT, median number of injured parties per attempt, median number of fatalities per attempt.
So after analysis I suppose I do go too far by throwing #blacklivesmatter out there. I did not mean to imply #blacklivesmatter is bigoted like Katherine Clark apparently is!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 04 2016, @08:30PM
The correct analogy would be "blue houses matter", not "burning houses matter".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 05 2016, @04:28PM
> You DO understand that "black lives matter" does not mean "no other lives do though, right?"
There is a silent "too" at the end of "black lives matter" that racists can't hear.