[German]An unpleasant experience for German Linux developer René Rebe, who was SWATted during a Twitch live streaming session. The doorbell rang and when Rebe opened it, the police were standing in the room. He was then handcuffed. Is an oppressive trend from the USA of sending the police to someone's house also spilling over into Germany?
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What is SWAT and what does it mean?
SWAT (written as S.W.A.T.) stands for Special Weapons And Tactics. SWAT units are generally trained, equipped, and deployed to resolve "high-risk situations", often those regular police units are not trained or equipped to handle, such as shootouts, standoffs, raids, hostage-takings, and terrorism.
SWATting is a term used in the USA when a local police S.W.A.T. team stands outside a house or apartment and enters armed. This is used in cases of suspected serious crime (attacks, etc.). In the USA, however, there is a critical development whereby people call 911 to trigger the deployment of an S.W.A.T. team in order to get one over on a victim. The S.W.A.T. team is then sent to a specified address (of a competitor or adversary) via an anonymous phone call.
It's always a very negative experience for the victim to open the door unsuspectingly and be taken down by armed police officers. For family members affected by SWATting, it is often a traumatic experience. Triggering a S.W.A.T. operation is not a trivial offense.
On December 28, 2017, a tragic incident occurred: during the deployment of a S.W.A.T. team, an innocent man was killed by US police officers. The reason for the deployment of the US police SWAT team was a fake emergency call with a fake hostage situation as a result of an argument between two gamers. I have compiled the details in the blog post Gamer schuld an tödlichem US-Polizeieinsatz (a Gamer to blame for deadly US police operation during swatting).
Linux developer René Rebe S.W.A.T.ted
René Rebe is a computer scientist and media designer (University of Berlin), German Linux developer and managing director of ExactCODE GmbH. Rebe is the developer of t2 Linux, ExactScan, OCRKit and PDF Recompress. He also runs a YouTube channel and streams on Twitch. During a streaming session on Linux development, someone anonymous sent a police S.W.A.T. team to his home. You can watch part of this incident in a YouTube video.
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I have linked a reddit post in the image above (there is a second reddit discussion here), the excerpt from the streaming session can be viewed on YouTube. Subtitles of the spoken words can be displayed in the video. The action: Rebe sits in front of the screen and explains something – the camera records him and you can see some computers in the background. The doorbell rings, Rebe gets up and opens it. The police are at the door and, according to Rebe, they handcuff him and storm the apartment. You can hear the conversation, see armed police officers walking through the room (they are captured on camera). Then you can hear "room safe" – and Rebe explains that he is a Linux developer, that a stream is currently running and that he has probably been the victim of a S.W.A.T. operation. I then heard in the video that the police commander instructed Rebe to shut down the system for the duration of the police operation. Rebe explained in the comments what the background to the police operation was:
the police said it was an email (or two) and I think anonymous emails are not particularly trustworthy. They could have sent a team of two to took nicely in the company if all is okay, and not 10 cops with drawn guns and tasers. Also IMHO they should only reasonably act on more ledges sources, like neighbors with caller id calling, and not random-dude-234234 @ fakemail.com, …!"
Even the police (in my eyes) didn't cover themselves in glory – even if the operation was quite "civilized" in my opinion. But you don't forget an operation like that for the rest of your life. The topic passed me by, but Thorsten M. informed me about the incident by e-mail (thanks for that). The topic was covered by tom's HARDWARE. Well, hoax based S.W.A.T. operations against streamers are always a topic for IT media in the USA.
In the current case, it is unclear who is responsible and triggered the S.W.A.T. operation with a hoax – the police are in the dark. Even René Rebe and the fans of his work can only guess what the reason for this incident was. It is to be hoped that the perpetrator will be caught, but if he was clever and lives abroad, the chances are slim. There are just too many idiots out there; in the USA, at least some people who anonymously triggered S.W.A.T. operations have been tracked down and punished.
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