You would jail someone for life for a prank call... when policemen are running around shooting innocent people?

A prank call is asking someone if their refrigerator is running, then telling them they better go catch it. Swatting involves having people with guns break into someone’s house and possibly kill them. Swatting isn’t a prank; it’s attempted murder.

The difference isn't in the attack, for which we normally hold the attacker responsible, but in the vulnerability and volatility of the attack surface, for which society is responsible in this case.

I think that the maximal culpability for the caller's crime is in the realm of irresponsible disclosure.

Can you explain that? Or follow it through to a conclusion, like what actual crime do you think was committed here?

No, actually it's exactly the same thing - or should be in a civilized country. Where policemen (the actual murderers in this case) don't execute unarmed innocent people.

"The bug" is the fact that American police kills innocent people that have done nothing wrong. Of course the caller should be fined for abusing a critical service, but the root cause of this murder isn't in the phone call - it's US police killing innocent people in alarming number of cases. Blaming it on the caller completely ignores all other police killings that have happened without a swatter.

Unless you're trying to say that being able to call up men that murder someone is a feature desired in your country?

Calling up men that murder someone is not a feature desired in any country, however once someone figures out that by doing a prank call in a particular way they will be calling up men who murder people to hopefully murder the people they don't like the prank call has changed its nature.

Certainly the U.S needs to stop the police killing people, but it also should treat people harshly for exploiting the 'people-killing' bug in their system.

If I figure out your internet of things refrigerator has a setting to add salmonella to chicken 25% of the time, and I then use an exploit to run the salmonella adding routine, the manufacturer should be sued for a lot of money for their stupid salmonella adding routine, and remove that routine. But I think you would agree that while my activity was similar to that time someone made your internet of things lights blink on and off, it was also more serious and I should suffer more for it.

> but the root cause of this murder isn't in the phone call

If you know there's a strong possibility (and in the US, this is the case) that your phone call could result in someone's death - and calling in a fake hostage/murder to trigger a SWAT response certainly qualifies - you are part of the root cause, definitely.

> Blaming it on the caller completely ignores all other police killings that have happened without a swatter.

This is ridiculous whataboutism.

> This is ridiculous whataboutism.

Pointing out apparent independence in a variable is not whataboutism, it's ideal deconstruction.

I too find this reaction very, very difficult to understand. There is an incredible urge to lower the standard for behavior for agents of the state to that of idiot kids using racial slurs on CoD.