Don't misuse emergency call services

19/10/2007 Written by minor

Mis­us­ing emer­gency ser­vices can be some­times quite expen­sive. Some­times you can be jailed for it. Ran­dall Ellis, 19-​years old from Muk­il­teo, Wash­ing­ton is accused from hack­ing into the county’s 911 sys­tem from his home and plac­ing a false emer­gency call, prompt­ing a fully armed response to the home of an unsus­pect­ing peo­ple, OC Reg­is­ter informed.

This tech­nique, known as “SWAT­ting” was seen in U.S. by law enforce­ment agen­cies already before. Attacker breaches into emer­gency sys­tem call­ing for help, then as response SWAT team is called on site. In this case, Ellis pre­tended to be a teenager shot into shoul­der by some­one and cocaine over­dose case. SWAT with heli­copter and dogs respon­den to this false call in Lake For­est house.

Now it is not clear, how Ellis breached into sys­tem and author­i­ties will not pub­lish details to not jeop­ar­dize inves­ti­ga­tion. Fact is, that Ellis trans­fered fake infor­ma­tion about ori­gin of the call. Inci­dent ended with­out casu­al­ties, but next time, such kids-​game could result into tragedy. There­fore don’t mis­use emer­gency ser­vices. Next time it could be you, who needs really their help.