ALAN W. FILION,
a/k/a "Nazgul Swattings,"
a/k/a "Torswats V3,"
a/k/a "Third Reich of Kiwiswats,"
a/k/a "The Table Swats,"
a/k/a "Angmar," and
a/k/a "Torswats"
Seems like a fun guy. It looks like most of this story was covered a year ago:
> from approximately August 2022 to January 2024, Filion made more than 375 swatting and threat calls, including calls in which he claimed to have planted bombs in the targeted locations or threatened to detonate bombs and/or conduct mass shootings at those locations.
Its not just the weapons. In parts of Europe you can get arrested for posting the wrong kind of meme online.
As a side note, when trying to research this you'll see weird double speak fact checks like below:
> Fact Check: 11-year-old arrested on suspicion of violent disorder after riots, not ‘mean tweets’
> Sending grossly offensive, obscene, indecent, or menacing messages on public electronic communication networks is a criminal offence in Britain under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003
> Misleading. An 11-year-old was arrested on suspicion of violent disorder, not for social media posts, during a swathe of arrests by British police targeting those involved in rioting.
But then the authors don't write what 'violent disorder' is.
Then they try to further confuse the matter by talking about a completely unrealted 11 year old boy that was arrested for suspicion of arson
> The spokesperson said the 11-year-old, one of five juveniles arrested on suspicion of violent disorder by the force on Aug. 28 in relation to the riots, was later bailed.
> Cleveland Police arrested another 11-year-old on suspicion of arson after a police vehicle was set alight in Hartlepool on July 31, according to the spokesperson and an Aug. 1 statement, opens new tab . The child was also released on bail, the spokesperson said.
And this isn't some weird online political rag, it's Reuters. It's all very strange.
FYI this is a reference to the opening statement of the Unabomber Manifesto "Industrial Society and its Future". Don't think OP meant anything by the distinction of US/humans
> The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the
human race.
The weapons are orthogonal to the culture; most of the police abuse volume is in beating, arrest and confinement, property destruction and confiscation, etc. The shootings make news, but lots of people don't get shot and still suffer lasting material consequences
It's a bit more complicated than just equipment I reckon. Australian cops don't necessarily use literal military equipment (as frequently as US cops) but they sure know how to and make time to beat and rough ride someone within an inch of their lives, harass and arrest political youtuber staff members (friendly jordies) for literally no reason, or tase people to death (a tiny ~92 year old demented lady at a nursing home with a blunt steak knife, for example) at impressive scale. Aboriginal Australians couldn't be the most incarcerated peoples on earth without the dedication of our repugnant police forces. It speaks to militarisation or being a disaster to me despite not rolling out the tanks because of the severity of responses is still utterly beyond reason and has basically the same outcomes including no repercussions for going so far beyond what could possibly be justified even when there actually is danger or a crime happening.
It would obviously fuck with the cultural reference replacing US for the world in the phrase.
But if you believe that only the US has this problem, I am sad to inform you that Taylor Swift and Hollywood Movies are not the only American cultural exports eagerly consumed around the world.
This is at best naive, and reads pretty smug and self-satisfied. You likely still have a military, and policing isn't really about the weapons a cop carries. Ironically less deadly weapons can encourage more liberal use, so maybe you can be proud of your higher rate of non-lethal beatings?
The whole point of swatting is to cause massive over-reaction by the police endangering victim's life. If it would just cause a regular visit by a cop nobody would do it - what would be the point of it, waste 5 minutes of person's time? The whole premise relies on the massive militarized response.
Do you really think that dressing in military special ops tactical clothing, with advanced and powerful weaponry, balaclavas, helmets and responding to a call in a armoured vehicle doesn't create any weird expectations on the mind of police officer of how they should behave in a call?
How is this even related to militarization? The perp is abusing emergency response systems with a total lack of empathy for the damage it did to the victim and the department.
The separation of empathy from an 18 year old online kid from his peers is the true tragedy here.
I think they are saying in the US the SWAT team shows up ready for war, while a more measured response would be a couple cops knocking on the door to see what's going on. Obviously the cops don't have a crystal ball and there's not going to be a clean solution here, outside of catching the person earlier.
It sucks this person was so angry and unfeeling to the world at a young age.
> We don’t need any Oct 7th type attacks happening on home soil.
Well homegrown attacks happen DAILY. "Averaging almost 50,000 deaths from firearms annually". But no, once they're not on the news like the Oct 7th attacks where, it's fine I guess.
> We don’t need any Oct 7th type attacks happening on home soil.
USA has 1-2 mass shootings everyday on average. This is far worse than a singular big attack. And how long would the reaction of police to any big attack even take? Is it actually realistic that they will have a useful impact with big guns?
The military model is that they are organized into units with training, and obey a central authority. On the whole, it's been an improvement over forming ad hoc posses of farmers and shopkeepers and arming them, or the medieval hue and cry model where someone screams and then everybody in town comes over and beats a stranger to death for having a different accent after dark. I'd love to see some statistics about how much worse it is now that we have professional police, though, if you've got any to share.
The "military model" goes so much further than that. They are "officers" and have military ranks as their position/title. They wear military-styled uniforms and headwear. They engage in military-style ceremonies.
> I'd love to see some statistics about how much worse it is now that we have professional police,
How fortunate that they're willing to collect statistics on their own performance for you.
In Europe this would have been a completely different story. It's highly unlikely (compared to the US) that a SWAT team equivalent would kill anyone. The guy could have got away with 5-7 years max.
I know it's a museum, but I prefer to live here.
I have been following swatting incidents of content creators for years and I have learned that police jurisdictions where this happens frequently in are becoming wiser and spreading information around, so the threat of getting killed from a swatting incident has gone down. Places with pockets of content creators like Austin Texas have become very aware of these types of things.
If you are a content creator, or someone who might be at risk for swatting you can call your local PD and explain the situation. You can let them know that you understand they must respond to those types of calls, but just wanted to call in and let them know it could happen. Most are happy to hear from you and take note.
Before swattings became popular, people used to send pizzas (popularized by old 4chan) and you would have to call all the pizza places in your area and get your address blacklisted. That was a pain.
I'd recommend that if you receive threats of a swatting, whether you're a content creator or not, it's a good idea to talk to your local police department about it the moment it happens.
Unfortunately, I speak from experience. I received a credible threat, called my local PD, and they began to investigate immediately. They also put notes in their dispatch system (which is shared by the local SWAT team) indicating that this had happened before, and to proceed with extreme caution.
The "swatter" never did follow through on the first attempt, but did follow through about 6 months later. I didn't get any threats from the swatter that time, but did get a call from my local PD while I was at work, and they let me know they'd driven by my place and called it off after being confident it was a false alarm.
Anticipating questions: no, there's no sort of protocol I setup with the PD. They have to investigate every threat, and even if we setup some sort of "shared secret" ahead of time, if a swatter says I'm cutting up my family in the basement, the PD can't know with certainty that I'm not. About the best I can do is make sure to answer the door when/if the PD shows up so they can more quickly establish things are safe.
Also: the attackers were after some OG Twitter accounts I used to use, and they thought they could intimidate me into giving the accounts to them.
Ye olde 4chan's reputation for being an evil website is funny in retrospect. The mortality rate on phony pizza deliveries is pretty close to zero and harmless compared to what goes down on the internet these days.
A European swatting may be highly unlikely to succeed in killing somebody, but the murderous intent is still there. It should be punished as attempted murder both in America and Europe.
Nevertheless European, especially German police, is obviously also prone to go all in without establishing any kind of context. One email is sufficient.
remarkably similar story to JStark1809, creator of the FGC9 [1] and thus a great boon to the people in Myanmar fighting against a tyrannical government. JStark died of a heart attack during a european swat raid.
It seems statistically rare (highly unlikely) that a SWAT team would injure or kill someone in the US too. I can only find references to 3 - of which only 1 is a result of a direct shooting by law enforcement. The other two are a shooting of law enforcement and a heart attack.
I've made this comment before but technology could help here. If the call was tagged as landline, cell, or VoIP along with approximate location info it would help a lot.
A landline call tagged as "same town" or cell call tagged as "pinged tower near reported location" could be treated more seriously than a VoIP call from "Fly-by-night VoIP Gateway Plc".
The phone system is sufficiently easy to spoof this kind of info, even if the dispatch does receive it (which they probably already do) it doesn't mean that the origin is reliably accurate. Furthermore, there is no way to be sure that police actually pay attention to the signals they have available.
They like opportunities to play with their tech toys and rough up some "suspects." A compelling story about someone in distress is the perfect excuse, whether the message comes in via VOIP, TOR or 4chan.
Readit News
https://www.wired.com/story/alan-filion-torswats-swatting-ar...
> from approximately August 2022 to January 2024, Filion made more than 375 swatting and threat calls, including calls in which he claimed to have planted bombs in the targeted locations or threatened to detonate bombs and/or conduct mass shootings at those locations.
( from https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/california-teenager-pleads-gu... )
Do you mean for the US, rather than the human race? Some of us live in countries where the only weapons most cops carry are truncheons and tasers.
As a side note, when trying to research this you'll see weird double speak fact checks like below:
> Fact Check: 11-year-old arrested on suspicion of violent disorder after riots, not ‘mean tweets’
> Sending grossly offensive, obscene, indecent, or menacing messages on public electronic communication networks is a criminal offence in Britain under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003
> Misleading. An 11-year-old was arrested on suspicion of violent disorder, not for social media posts, during a swathe of arrests by British police targeting those involved in rioting.
But then the authors don't write what 'violent disorder' is.
Then they try to further confuse the matter by talking about a completely unrealted 11 year old boy that was arrested for suspicion of arson
> The spokesperson said the 11-year-old, one of five juveniles arrested on suspicion of violent disorder by the force on Aug. 28 in relation to the riots, was later bailed.
> Cleveland Police arrested another 11-year-old on suspicion of arson after a police vehicle was set alight in Hartlepool on July 31, according to the spokesperson and an Aug. 1 statement, opens new tab . The child was also released on bail, the spokesperson said.
And this isn't some weird online political rag, it's Reuters. It's all very strange.
https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/11-year-old-arrested-susp...
> The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
https://ia600300.us.archive.org/30/items/the-ted-k-archive-t...
But if you believe that only the US has this problem, I am sad to inform you that Taylor Swift and Hollywood Movies are not the only American cultural exports eagerly consumed around the world.
Do you really think that dressing in military special ops tactical clothing, with advanced and powerful weaponry, balaclavas, helmets and responding to a call in a armoured vehicle doesn't create any weird expectations on the mind of police officer of how they should behave in a call?
The separation of empathy from an 18 year old online kid from his peers is the true tragedy here.
It sucks this person was so angry and unfeeling to the world at a young age.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
The big guns are hidden from sight anyway, and only brought out when need be. We don’t need any Oct 7th type attacks happening on home soil.
Well homegrown attacks happen DAILY. "Averaging almost 50,000 deaths from firearms annually". But no, once they're not on the news like the Oct 7th attacks where, it's fine I guess.
https://www.statista.com/topics/10904/gun-violence-in-the-un...
USA has 1-2 mass shootings everyday on average. This is far worse than a singular big attack. And how long would the reaction of police to any big attack even take? Is it actually realistic that they will have a useful impact with big guns?
> I'd love to see some statistics about how much worse it is now that we have professional police,
How fortunate that they're willing to collect statistics on their own performance for you.
If you are a content creator, or someone who might be at risk for swatting you can call your local PD and explain the situation. You can let them know that you understand they must respond to those types of calls, but just wanted to call in and let them know it could happen. Most are happy to hear from you and take note.
Before swattings became popular, people used to send pizzas (popularized by old 4chan) and you would have to call all the pizza places in your area and get your address blacklisted. That was a pain.
Unfortunately, I speak from experience. I received a credible threat, called my local PD, and they began to investigate immediately. They also put notes in their dispatch system (which is shared by the local SWAT team) indicating that this had happened before, and to proceed with extreme caution.
The "swatter" never did follow through on the first attempt, but did follow through about 6 months later. I didn't get any threats from the swatter that time, but did get a call from my local PD while I was at work, and they let me know they'd driven by my place and called it off after being confident it was a false alarm.
Anticipating questions: no, there's no sort of protocol I setup with the PD. They have to investigate every threat, and even if we setup some sort of "shared secret" ahead of time, if a swatter says I'm cutting up my family in the basement, the PD can't know with certainty that I'm not. About the best I can do is make sure to answer the door when/if the PD shows up so they can more quickly establish things are safe.
Also: the attackers were after some OG Twitter accounts I used to use, and they thought they could intimidate me into giving the accounts to them.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41550043
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGC-9
Here is my reference for 3 events in the US (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting#Injuries_or_deaths_du...).
Dead Comment
Plus calls all over the country require national level investigation, not local police efforts. And that's what happened: the FBI had to step in.
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
A landline call tagged as "same town" or cell call tagged as "pinged tower near reported location" could be treated more seriously than a VoIP call from "Fly-by-night VoIP Gateway Plc".
They like opportunities to play with their tech toys and rough up some "suspects." A compelling story about someone in distress is the perfect excuse, whether the message comes in via VOIP, TOR or 4chan.
This is no more complicated than grade school playgrounds: don't give the bully what they want.
https://www.wired.com/story/alan-filion-torswats-guilty-plea...