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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 04 2016, @09:39PM
And a woman's anonymity is usually greater online as well, so it balances out. What the harassment they speak of is is speech, which should never be forbidden. If it was physical harassment, that would be different, but merely feeling threatened or offended by someone's speech is no grounds to punish them. This is one reason why I support tools that allow for strong anonymity: To combat draconian government restrictions on speech. This applies no matter what the type of speech is.
Your free speech ends at someone else's safety.
That makes no sense. Someone else is not endangered by mere speech, as speech cannot cause physical harm unless it is so loud as to be capable of damaging someone's hearing. You must be referring to a very useless and subjective definition of "safety", which is a type of "safety" that isn't worth protecting.
And nowhere in the first amendment does it even remotely imply that your free speech ends at someone else's "safety". I guess "shall make no law" means nothing at all.
Go fuck yourself, and drown in the futility of trying to hunt down people who said things that are considered threatening or offensive.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday February 04 2016, @09:58PM
That makes no sense. Someone else is not endangered by mere speech, as speech cannot cause physical harm unless it is so loud as to be capable of damaging someone's hearing. You must be referring to a very useless and subjective definition of "safety", which is a type of "safety" that isn't worth protecting.
And nowhere in the first amendment does it even remotely imply that your free speech ends at someone else's "safety". I guess "shall make no law" means nothing at all.
Go fuck yourself, and drown in the futility of trying to hunt down people who said things that are considered threatening or offensive.
I would argue that "doxxing" and "swatting" probably are not protected speech.
Doxxing may be protected speech, unless and until that information is used to commit criminal acts. Assuming it can be proven that the information taken from a specific act of doxxing provided the means for another to commit a criminal act, that's conspiracy.
Swatting, on the other hand, is definitely not protected speech under the First Amendment. I imagine that in many places, if someone is killed as a result of a swatting incident, the 'swatter' could be charged with felony murder [wikipedia.org]. Conceivably, a doxxer could also be charged similarly if conspiracy can be proved.
N.B.: IANAL
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr