US anti-swatting bill sponsor targeted by swatting prank

The Internet “prank” known as ‘swatting’ doesn’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon, as a US politician found out this week.

Katherine Clark, a congresswoman from Massachusetts, has been actively campaigning to have sentences for pranks like swatting strengthened under the Interstate Swatting Hoax Act for which she is the sponsor. However this week she found herself the victim of the very prank outlined in her proposed law.

Swatting, for those that don’t know, is the act of making a false report to the police with the aim of getting a SWAT (or other armed response) team to raid the home of an innocent target. This is often achieved by the person initiating the swatting prank contacting the police and informing them that there is an active shooter at a certain location. The person initiating the swatting will likely know the person who lives at that location, thus swatting is typically targeting specific people.

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Incidents of swatting increased after it was notoriously used within the online video gaming scene, where rival video gaming groups would “swat each other by sending in prank calls resulting in SWAT raids which were often caught on the video gamers live streams, and many of which can be seen on YouTube.

However in the case of Clark, it was a Sunday evening after putting her children to bed when armed police blocked off her road and came to her house. According to police, a report was made claiming that shots had been fired at her residence.

Clark’s proposed law – introduced in November 2015 and has already received bipartisan support – would mean that if anyone was killed during a swatting prank, the person who initiated it would receive life imprisonment.