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Serial Swatter "Obnoxious" OR Giving A Psychopath the Internet

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posted on Nov, 29 2015 @ 12:34 AM
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Serial Swatter; New York Times

I was on the "News" app on my phone when I stumbled upon the article linked above. It was very well written and researched, but above all it was absolutely terrifying. Terrifying how one deranged sixteen-year-old kid could nearly ruin the lives of dozens of innocent people.

Here's just the introductory snippet of the theme of the entire article:


early one weekend morning in January 2014, Janet was sleeping fitfully in her parents’ home in Toronto. A junior studying elementary education at a nearby college, she had gone home for the weekend in a state of nervous collapse. For months, someone going by the name ‘‘Obnoxious’’ had been harassing her online. He had called her cellphone repeatedly and sent her threatening texts. Worst of all, he had threatened to ‘‘swat’’ her at school — to make a false emergency call to the police and lure a SWAT team to her door. Janet was afraid to go to sleep; she kept thinking that he was going to swat her in the middle of the night. He said he was going to swat her family, too. Her father owned a bar, and her mother worked at a hotel. They were from China, and their English wasn’t great. They didn’t know much about her life online, and they would never understand why someone would stalk their daughter on the Internet. Around 6:30 a.m., her father jostled her awake and said she needed to come downstairs. When she got to the top of the steps, she saw her family’s living room ‘‘covered in cops.’’ There were at least five officers in riot gear, guns drawn. They had bulletproof vests and pads and helmets with visors. She remembers the eerie silence of the officers — they said nothing at all. She had no idea what to do with her hands. ‘‘I was scared to move,’’ she says. ‘‘I wanted to go downstairs with my hands up. I was afraid they would shoot me. I was so scared. I feel like they just didn’t really let their guard down until I told them what happened.’’ Hoax, she said finally, this is a hoax. It’s not real. I’m being stalked. It started with DDoSing. As soon as she said ‘‘DDoSing,’’ she could tell that the officers weren’t following. Then she checked her phone and saw a stream of texts from Obnoxious. They were still arriving, crawling down the screen, when she held up her phone to show the officers and ask for help.



I was somewhat passive to the idea of "swatters", or people who think it's amusing to call SWAT teams to innocent citizens houses by reporting a "serious crime", taking advantage of the near-anonymity of the internet and using it to mess with other people. "Jerks will be jerks" I thought. Of course there'll be people who exploit the system, as many often do. But I didn't think there were enough of them, or they were powerful enough, to do this kind of damage.

I was wrong. To think a mentally-incapacitated teenager could do all of this to dozens of people, imagine what kind of damage someone with a real motive and years of experience could wreak upon the whole world!

This kid would swat different people FORTY TIMES A MONTH at some points.

I highly suggest reading the full article, but I also made this thread to bring up the issue of cybersecurity, cybercrime, online abuse, and the role of SWAT teams in our society. What do you all believe about these issues, and what should we do about them?



posted on Nov, 29 2015 @ 01:01 AM
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Reminds me of this incident:




posted on Nov, 29 2015 @ 01:10 AM
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originally posted by: starwarsisreal
Reminds me of this incident:



I actually saw this on a reaction channel. The whole incident disgusts me. Wasting of police resources. Emotional abuse and the loss of peace of mind within the victim. Even more waste of police resources trying to catch the perpetrator, distracting the force from more direct and pressing crimes.



posted on Nov, 29 2015 @ 01:12 AM
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a reply to: Passerby1996

Well, given what seems to happen with alarming frequency when people have their home erroneously invaded by the police, what happens when somebody ends up dead? Manslaughter charges for the person who sent the false report... if it even gets investigated rather than swept under the rug or explained away.



posted on Nov, 29 2015 @ 01:15 AM
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Death penalty. some people are just evil.



posted on Nov, 29 2015 @ 01:24 AM
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originally posted by: OccamsRazor04
Death penalty. some people are just evil.


No. What they need is significant mental counseling and support from people who actually want them to get better.

I'm not saying we should ever let the worst of these offenders out of this counseling program. But, are we really better than the people we're executing if we believe, just as much as they do, that what we're doing is right?



posted on Nov, 29 2015 @ 02:06 AM
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a reply to: Passerby1996




I was somewhat passive to the idea of "swatters", or people who think it's amusing to call SWAT teams to innocent citizens houses by reporting a "serious crime", taking advantage of the near-anonymity of the internet and using it to mess with other people. "Jerks will be jerks" I thought. Of course there'll be people who exploit the system, as many often do. But I didn't think there were enough of them, or they were powerful enough, to do this kind of damage.


I can kind of understand that outlook, but in this case people can actually die. Animals, too.

There's a line. This type of behavior crosses it.



posted on Nov, 29 2015 @ 02:10 AM
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a reply to: Passerby1996

Narcissistic sociopaths.

That's what those swatters are. They don't have empathy.



posted on Nov, 29 2015 @ 02:47 AM
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originally posted by: Passerby1996

originally posted by: OccamsRazor04
Death penalty. some people are just evil.


No. What they need is significant mental counseling and support from people who actually want them to get better.

I'm not saying we should ever let the worst of these offenders out of this counseling program. But, are we really better than the people we're executing if we believe, just as much as they do, that what we're doing is right?

Yes, because they do what they do because they do not care, I make my choice because I do care.

He did not think what he was doing was right, he simply did not care either way.
edit on 29-11-2015 by OccamsRazor04 because: (no reason given)



posted on Nov, 29 2015 @ 03:25 AM
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a reply to: Passerby1996

Is not swatting a form of terrorism . I mean if i was to say there was a bomb at A B or C it would be considered terrorism . Lock a few of these people away for ten years . Word would soon get around that it is not such a good idea .



posted on Nov, 29 2015 @ 03:30 AM
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originally posted by: OccamsRazor04
Death penalty. some people are just evil.


Like you? Shameful post.

All life is precious.



posted on Nov, 29 2015 @ 03:34 AM
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originally posted by: Danowski

originally posted by: OccamsRazor04
Death penalty. some people are just evil.


Like you? Shameful post.

All life is precious.

Exactly why YOUR post is shameful. Life is precious, which is exactly why we have a duty to safeguard it from those who seek to destroy it.

We are not talking someone who made a mistake and accidentally hurt someone. We are talking someone who stalked multiple women with the intent to destroy their lives, blackmailing them for nude photographs and then posting those photos when further blackmail attempts were not met, going so far as to post nude pictures of a 14yo girl.

There is no place in this world for people like that, and out of love, we have a duty to act.



posted on Nov, 29 2015 @ 03:35 AM
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originally posted by: hutch622
a reply to: Passerby1996

Is not swatting a form of terrorism . I mean if i was to say there was a bomb at A B or C it would be considered terrorism . Lock a few of these people away for ten years . Word would soon get around that it is not such a good idea .

If you read the article swatting is the least of this person's crimes, it's truly sickening what he did.


Then he demanded nude pictures. He had a foot fetish. He asked them to talk about sex.

He posted nude pictures of some women on Twitter as well. He once posted a nude shot of a 14-year-old girl and later bragged that he was a pedophile. Women reported the abuse to Twitter, but whenever Twitter banned him, he would just make a new account and continue as before.

edit on 29-11-2015 by OccamsRazor04 because: (no reason given)



posted on Nov, 29 2015 @ 04:13 AM
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a reply to: OccamsRazor04

My comment still stands . But after reading the whole article , if his details became public , and it was my daughter , the police would be the last of his problems . But . I would make sure that not only him , but his mates in the background got theirs . There would be no mercy , just broken bones .



posted on Nov, 29 2015 @ 04:16 AM
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originally posted by: hutch622
a reply to: OccamsRazor04

My comment still stands . But after reading the whole article , if his details became public , and it was my daughter , the police would be the last of his problems . But . I would make sure that not only him , but his mates in the background got theirs . There would be no mercy , just broken bones .

Can't disagree with that. If I was on your jury, I would nullify that verdict faster than the DA could blink.



posted on Nov, 29 2015 @ 04:42 AM
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a reply to: hutch622




I would make sure that not only him , but his mates in the background got theirs .


That stood out to me too. The guy had a cheerleading squad of buddies who knew, and endorsed, what he was doing. What did the police do about that? It wasn't necessarily just this one guy, maybe he was the main one and the others did the same stuff? It also seems like nothing they did was high-end hacking; it looks like fairly standard techniques (social engineering, weak security vectors etc) were exploited towards causing maximum anguish, trauma and wasted resources.

'Obnoxious' has little or no chance of recovering from these incidents. Beyond redeemable and likely to be a blight in the lives of many people in the future. I don't believe people can demean others for so long without becoming broken themselves.



posted on Nov, 29 2015 @ 04:49 AM
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originally posted by: Kandinsky
'Obnoxious' has little or no chance of recovering from these incidents. Beyond redeemable and likely to be a blight in the lives of many people in the future. I don't believe people can demean others for so long without becoming broken themselves.


Exactly how I feel. I still do not hate him, in fact I love him, but there is no place on this world for people like that, not as long as my family is on this Earth. People like this it's far less a question of "if" they offend again, but when, and how bad.



posted on Nov, 29 2015 @ 04:57 AM
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a reply to: OccamsRazor04

Yeah, there's a role for everyone in this life. Or there should be.

He'll have his whole life ahead of him, starting March, and someone, somewhere should be trying very hard indeed to find something positive for this individual to do. It's like a typical school-shooter has found a way to ruin lives out of spite and still live. Can society sustain so much nihilism?



posted on Nov, 29 2015 @ 06:35 AM
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a reply to: OccamsRazor04

When you have someone who has an emerging psychopathic personality disorder, and who will presumably be diagnosed when he's 18 coupled with an abusive childhood you're in for trouble. And when that person has already shown a malicious and manipulative attitude towards young women with the clear intent on terrorising them....16 months seems like a very lenient jail sentence. I'm guessing that must have been the highest sentence they could impose for whatever they convicted him of? Is it likely that he'll be monitored from now on, or is he free to go? I'm only asking you because I seem to remember that you're a psychiatrist (although I may have got that wrong) and the boy in the story seems like an incredibly dangerous person.



posted on Nov, 29 2015 @ 05:27 PM
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If anyone wants to know more about the kind of people that perpetrate such attacks I recommend you take a look at this forum:

8ch.net...


It's an anonymous board where people like the one in the op gather and share information about potential victims and plan their attacks.

WARNING: The content on this site can be very graphic and the people who inhabit it are some of the worst people I've seen on the internet. Don't go there if you're easily offended or upset.
edit on 29-11-2015 by shlib because: (no reason given)



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