WASHINGTON – A potentially lethal form of prank-calling could soon be banned with stiffer penalties under a piece of legislation that just passed a crucial vote in Congress.<\/p>\n
The bill takes aim at a tactic known as “swatting” – where a prankster calls the cops and alerts them to a bomb threat or other criminal activity going down at the target’s house. Unable to tell the difference between a fake threat and a real one, the authorities send a SWAT team to storm the victim’s abode, guns drawn. And the victim has no choice but to endure the abuse.<\/p>\n
It’s a form of primarily Internet-driven trolling that’s become all too common, lawmakers say. Look it up on YouTube and you’ll get tens of thousands of results like this one.<\/p>\n
Video gamers are often the victims – and the perpetrators. Some players broadcast their hobby online, with cameras trained on their own faces. So when a particularly nasty gamer wants the instant, visual gratification of humiliating his or her in-game rival in real time, pop goes the call to 911.<\/p>\n
But gamers aren’t the only people who’ve been subjected to this kind of harassment. Journalists, politicians and celebrities have all been targeted.<\/p>\n
The bill that just passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee would impose up to a 20-year prison sentence and heavy fines for pulling the stunt, defined in the text as “the transmission of misleading or inaccurate caller identification information with the intent to trigger a response by a law enforcement agency.”<\/p>\n
In part, the swatting trend underscores how easy it is, in the Internet age, for a harasser to dig up personal information belonging to their targets, such as their addresses. It also mirrors the growing militarization of police forces around the country, a trend that simply makes it easier for more police departments to meet situations with guns and tactical gear. And it highlights the blurring boundaries between online spaces and offline spaces – increasingly, the Internet is the same as real life.<\/p>\n
The bill’s next hurdle will be a floor vote in the House.<\/p>\n
(c) 2016, The Washington Post \u00b7 Brian Fung<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WASHINGTON – A potentially lethal form of prank-calling could soon be banned with stiffer penalties under a piece of legislation that just passed a crucial vote in Congress. The bill takes aim at a tactic known as “swatting” – where a prankster calls the cops and alerts them to a bomb threat or other criminal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5409,"featured_media":74750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n