Leslie Jones hack investigated by federal agents

I was thinking mainly of the issue of proof in court. Of course the police would deny that anybody was being put at risk by their attack, and a defence counsel would use this. As a result you would not get a conviction for reckless endangerment or anything like that.
But make wasting police time a serious federal offence with appropriate penalties and the burden of proof is much lower.

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The thing about swatting is that the callers uniformly portray a situation with an armed person who has/is supposedly going to kill someone - it’s very deliberately being set up to create the most tension and highest probability of violence possible. An honest police officer would admit that being sent to a home with the expectation of meeting an armed killer could result in someone getting shot - if only the police themselves. (Ok, granted, that requires an honest police officer.) Still - it regularly happens that SWAT teams go to the wrong address and the inhabitants and/or police get killed, and I think people are more aware of that these days, and in that context the caller’s intention is pretty clear - this is intended to be more than just an inconvenience.
This is where specific anti-swatting legislation becomes useful - you need only be concerned about whether they were the ones that made the call that fit the criteria for swatting, with the possibility for harm assumed.

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If famous people do nothing else for the rest of us, they suffer common problems publicly and visibly