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by mulmen 1174 days ago
But the same systemic weakness that enables Swatting can be exploited here. Specifically that the government assumes good faith. Instead of sending a SWAT team to your house I can sign up for a DDoS in your name.
2 comments

I'd like to think that the investigation would be more sophisticated than just see what name is on the ddos request.
You have far more faith in police than I do
Apart from people (hopefully) not using their real names to make the ddos request, I would guess the investigation is done by a tech department rather than non specialist officers.
You have far more faith in police than I do

We have nontechnical people making legislation about technical things, why do you think police are any different

I don't think non technical people could pursue the investigation at all. I'm technical but not in that specialism so I'd have to do some studying just to get started.

Do you really imagine a patrol cop gets given a computer and told to 'find the suspect'? The legislators have someone else write what they put their name to, so that's not comparable.

>patrol cop gets given a computer and told to 'find the suspect'?

No, just one that got promoted to detective

And then you'll get a warning from the police? While not ideal, that's hardly the same as a potentially fatal swatting
Depends entirely on how the police reacts, but it could as well lead to them confiscating all of your computers and putting you in a jail.

Of course, swatting is worse. An on-demand terrorist attack by phone call is hard to top. But this one can be pretty bad too. Well, or maybe not, because it's not the starting evidence that makes it bad.

It doesn't have to be fatal to be bad.