We report, You decide
Last week we spent a lot of time writing about Brett Kimberlin and the incident involving blogger Patterico where someone spoofed his phone number and told 911 he had shot his wife.
Tonight, my family was sitting around the kitchen table eating dinner when sheriffs deputies pulled up in the driveway.
Someone called 911 from my address claiming there had been an accidental shooting.
It wasn’t nearly the trauma that Patterico suffered, but I guess the Erickson household is on somebody’s radar.
Luckily it was two sheriffs deputies who knew me and I had already, last week, advised the Sheriff’s Department to be on the look out for something like this.
From Erick’s Twitter
More importantly, I have an unlisted phone number someone was able to track it down.
And as was pointed out at Patterico’s, Kimberlin also has a history of trying to get someone to copycat what he did in order to have a claim that he was innocent of the first one. His best buds may do it too.
This piece of shit needs to be back in prison. Let’s hope he’s facilitating that.
However for the left this will be their new form of “pie-ing” those they disagree with.
He has support from and relationship to the 1% and a nice little tax dodge for them too.
I don’t think much of Erik Erickson, but it was smart he notified the cops this might happen.
Mr. Kimberlin shouldn’t be walking free to begin with. The man is responsible for several bombings and he was out after a few years? No wonder people have lost faith in the “justice” system.
This SWATing thing keeps up and someone is going to die. It’s only a matter of time.
This is ridiculous. Don’t the cops have caller ID and reverse directories? I thought it was a crime to file false reports, whether or not they are anonymous. Don’t any of the SWAT-ees have friends and family who are cops? We know Pat and Erick know LEOs, so there should be a way to crush this nonsense before someone gets hurt.
One downside to pissing off a lot of people is that if you turn up dead, it will be difficult to discover who offed you.
If you care about that sort of thing.
They’re spoofing the phone numbers, leigh. Which is to say that they make it look like the call is coming from your house.
Oh. I didn’t know you could do that, Pablo.
Leigh
what Pablo said … it’s spoofing especially easy for hackers for voice over IP.
You’d think they’d be able to tell if the phone number is coming from the wrong originator. Why should they accept a call supposedly from a landline that’s coming from a VOIP system?
Everytime I’ve called the cops, they haved always called back. I don’t know police protocol, but there must be some way of checking before dispatching units on a SWAT call. That has to be awfully costly.
I’ll have to check with some officers at work, maybe I can get some clue. Hubby is more data than voice guy but wonders why Homeland security isn’t in on this because it’s cyber terrorism.
leigh
also, if not a direct emergency situation (“I’ve shot my wife and I’m gonna kill my kids!”) then I can see cops calling back. But if they delay rolling and someone IS murdered, say hello to lawsuit heaven.
Yeah, I figured they would send a unit or units (regular patrol) rolling, but delay on the SWAT until patrol relays an actual threat.
My cousins work CIS, so they’re no help with procedure before they go in after all the brouhaha.
CSI (fat fingers)
Jesus, pranks?
Pranks, my ass. I’m with you, Darleen, where is Homeland Security on this?
Lawsuit? I wonder. The Supreme Court found over 100 years ago that the Police are not responsible for your safety.
For the record, there aren’t actually SWAT teams involved. The practice has acquired that name anyway.
I watched SWAT get one of my drug-dealing neighbors in the 80s. Scary stuff.
So, these guys are regular cops or sheriffs, then?
Could be either, depending on the jurisdiction. Around here, you’ll never see a Sheriff responding. They’re this important.
So, no Sheriffs in RI then.
Or it’s like one guy. Maybe two.
Sure doesn’t look like it.
Maybe two. But they probably don’t know each other.
Well it’s a big state.
darleen can you photoshop a pic with baracky sucking photovoltaic/windmills.
We shall go on to the end, we shall mock them
fightin France, we shall mock themfighton the seas and oceans, we shall mock themfightwith growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall mock themfighton the beaches, we shall mock themfighton the landing grounds, we shall mock themfightin the fields and in the streets, we shall mock themfightin the hills; we shall never surrenderBut if you need a process server, they’re your guy. Or two. Because no Constables.
Nice article Darleen.
Pranks, my ass. I’m with you, Darleen, where is Homeland Security on this?
Watching out for right-wing extremism and making sure TSA photographs your junk before every flight.
We know that Congree is busy making sure that MLB players haven’t used steroids and lied about it, that’s for sure.
[…] an Erick Erickson Tweet [tip of the fedora to Darleen Click]: More importantly, I have an unlisted phone number someone was able to track it […]
From Darleen’s link and others that it links it seems this has been done since at least 2006-7 by a number of hackers. Mostly against each other or their personal enemies.
The left’s wrinkle is to take this into the political area and use it to try to intimidate people into shutting up.
Speaking clinically, like an emotionally detached robot, I note that it will be very interesting to see which side logs the first KIA: The douche bag left or the pissed off right. The Left will sic the up-armored police apparatus on some RW blogger; Some RW blogger is gonna freak out and shoot one of these guys.
Somebody is going to get killed.
Over tweets and blog posts.
Well, to Kimberlin it’s about protecting his scams. It’s like Whitey Bulger killing somebody to keep one of his illegal enterprises from being “ratted out” to the cops.
Patterico and Ericson both were on blogtalkradio tonight and some freak called. Twice.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/darby-stranahan/2012/05/28/patterico-dicusses-swatting-kimberlin
Darleen or Jeff, would you start a Memorial Day thread, please?
Which is why one should drop the land-line, move completely to cellular. After my alarm system was upgraded with a GSM card, that’s just what I’ve done. Plus, that ‘line’ can’t be cut by burglars!
@Rosalindj – I just listened to the podcast –
The freak was at 50:31 and 65:51 …
That was definitely weird.
Boyd:
Really? That’s all it’s about?
There are no issues motivating those “tweets and blog posts”? Kimberlin and crew aren’t being funded and protected by an identifiable section of the political scene? They aren’t picking their targets based on politics?
Well, that takes a load off my mind. It’s all about “tweets and blog posts”. It’s not the political left exercising their will to violence.
The perps behind these attacks should be (re)introduced to Jamal and Bruno, for nightly lights-out Cellblock 17 festivities.
Crawford,
Respectfully, I think you missed my point. These people are willing to exercise a will to violence and conquer….over tweets and blog posts. It is one thing to “Moby” or troll or what have you; it is another all together to call 911 on the pretext of spousal murder.
This is the raw totalitarian nerve the Left is perpetually rubbing within the context of societal improvement.
Lest you think I’m pretending to Bonhoeffer or some such, I am not: I am willing to exercise a will to kill and impose force, make no mistake, but over things like Normandy, Iwo Jima and, if it comes to it, Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
O/T but I just got a call that someone stole my CC information and tried to use it. Caught me off guard, but there’s a reason I have a CC just for online transactions. I give Capital One a lot of credit, (no pun intended) they called to check on the charges in less than 24 hours.
Anyway, while I don’t store credit card information on my computer, I’m now switching to my Linux OS, just in case.
This is a test post, to see if I’m getting this configured correctly.
Capital One is not my favorite outfit in the world, but it sounds like you’re getting good service from them. Someone recently swiped my number and made some test purchases over the Internet, which my wife discovered within a few minutes and shut the card down fast. Whoever bought it is in for disappointment.
Roddy, I don’t think Rob misses the point at all, but disputes it. This is not a simple matter of “[something] … over tweets and blog posts”, as if such things could be sterilized of any and every political stance, but goes, in Rob’s view (and in my own, I’ll vow) to the primary dispute over the basis of our politics in the altogether. And you see it yourself, as you demonstrate in “the raw totalitarian nerve”!
To say it another way (and simultaneously bring in another underlying question at the heart of our political disputations today); there is no such thing as a robotically analytical political “science” (embodied in particular in the assertions of the positivists best represented by Weber); there is no possibility of a distinction between facts and values; there is no such human being as is not immediately engaged in judgments of the good and the good life. The pretense of such things, together with the other well known pretensions of the left today, is — in itself — an indicator of the political crisis of our times.
Blake
It’s entirely possible for your CC info to be stolen out in the general world. By a waitperson, counter-person, a fake swipe device sitting on top a real one at the gas station.
Even someone standing close enough to you to read the mag strip on your card in your wallet in your back pocket.
Darleen,
It is very unlikely the card number was stolen when in my wallet or by a store clerk. It’s my internet purchase card and as such, I leave it at home 99% of the time. I have two cards, one I carry and one that stays at home.
I have an idea where the card number was stolen (I’m almost 100% sure it was a data breach) from and if it turns out to be correct, I’m going to advertise which company.
It’s my internet purchase card
Actually, that’s an excellent idea of how to pinpoint possible theft … limiting what card goes to what purchases.
Let me know how it turns out.
There is an uptick in scams on the elderly, as well. This last year, my mother has been called by persons pretending to be my son and my niece. The woman pretending to be my niece, claimed that she was in Canada and being held in jail for some sort of offense and needed a large amount of money wired to her so she could make bond.
My mom was suspicious and asked a lot of questions and asked for a number to call back. She got a number from the woman and then called my brother in Texas who informed her that his daughter was there in Austin.
A few weeks later, a man pretending to be my son called her and told her he was being held in Central America (I forget which country) and needed money, etc. She called me and I told her, no that he was in OKC. I told her to call the cops and the FBI liason. In the meantime, I called my dad and step-mother and told them to disregard any calls from any of the grandkids in “distress”.
The scary part was, they knew an incredible amount of information about both kids and family members. Anyone with elderly parents, please let them beware.
Darleen, I also do not use my debit card on the internet.
Anyway, if I find out anything, I will let you know.
Good luck Blake.
Thanks, Roddy.
Btw, I should have said that I never use my debit card for any kind of purchases.
The LA Times has a new word for people like me: transcripter. They are still working on getting “denial” in there somewhere.
Unfortunately for transcript transparency advocates, school transcripts, like tax returns, are private.
unless baracky demands mittens tax returns
I, for one, don’t care that much about President Obama’s college transcripts. All Obama’s transcripts would do is prove what I already know: President Obama is a fraud, both as a person and a scholar.
If Obama spent four years studying applied Marxism in it’s various euphemisms, in light of his current attacks on capitalism and seeming unalterable dedication to a magical green energy economy that had to have been developed in the back of the ChoomWagon, then a rationale can be presented to soon-to-be-former Obama voters that “Obama betrayed you first”. It should make it easier for those voters to “betray” their own previous decision to support Obama.
I want to see his medical records. The whole enchilada, bloodwork and everything. That would be very telling. I also want to know what medications he is on.
Personally, I have long thought Obama is an alcoholic (as is his wife) and I don’t believe he has quit smoking, either.
OK, I’ve been away for a bit, don’t bother filling me in.
I understand this is a terrible situation to be in, and I feel bad for Stacey.
This is relevant, and comes from way, way back when Garry Trudeau still wasn’t funny.
Oh, wow. Kimberlin really did pull the wool, didn’t he?
There’s a sucker born every minute, evidently.
Last time I can find a mention of Kimberlin in Doonesbury is December 14, 1991. So, this important issue of Dan Quayle’s purported DEA file vanished without a trace, and also without an apology. And you know what? I would guess that no apology will be forthcoming, ever.