On Saturday, February 23 at 7:28am EST, the Cambridge (Massachusetts) Police Department met face-to-face with our nation's growing nightmare. A call came in. A potential shooter loomed on the nearby MIT campus. Someone had a “really big gun” and “armor” and was “getting out of control.”
An alert went through the department's automated alert system immediately.
This call lasted more than 18 minutes. One minute in, the dispatcher notified MIT Police and sent CPD units as well as State Police to the scene. Within two minutes, MIT police entered the potential shooter zone—Building 7—not too far away from the main quad, next door to many other campus buildings.
Five minutes in, the caller finally identified the alleged gunman by name, pointing to a member of MIT's own staff. Moments later, the caller revealed the gunman's ultimate target: MIT President Rafael Reif. The caller elaborated. The alleged gunman was heading toward the administrative offices. It was all part of a larger plan: retaliation, according to MIT, against "the people involved in the suicide of Aaron Swartz." Officers split up and traveled to the second location in order to ensure the safety of Reif. The building and surrounding area was placed on lock down at 7:43am. The call hadn't even finished.
When all was said and done, the area remained shut down for nearly three hours. More than 30 armed officers searched the campus. Traffic was diverted on Memorial Drive and Massachusetts Avenue just outside the area. Numerous news outlets followed the situation. MIT issued formal warnings to all members of its community (more than an hour after the initial CPD alert). Students were asked to take shelter in place throughout the morning upon being notified. The MIT employee identified by the caller was put through questioning but eventually cleared of any involvement. Later that day, even the FBI and Secret Service were called in on the matter.
Haven't heard about this? Thankfully, it's because no shooting took place on February 23 at MIT. The police thoroughly checked out the situation and declared the reports of a gunman to be false shortly after 10:30am. The situation was the result of what's being called an elaborate hoax, still unsolved and being investigated as of yesterday.
Today, MIT communicated its version of the events to the campus community through e-mail. A call did occur on Saturday morning, but it came through a Sprint relay message service designed for people with hearing or speech impediments. This means there was no record of the caller's voice. Every detail outlined above was typed by the caller and then relayed by a Sprint operator who communicated orally with the CPD dispatcher.
The whole scenario is suspicious, yet oddly familiar. While no official word from the parties involved yet states it, the chain of events described perfectly mirrors a tactic employed by Hollywood-tormenting hackers in late 2012: "swatting."
She’s just swatting Miley
Swatting, as described by The LA Times, is "a fast-growing phenomenon masterminded by anonymous mischief-makers who alert police to a bogus crime situation, prompting a tactical response—sometimes by SWAT officers—that involves a high-risk search for phantom assailants." Last fall, swatting sent police responders to the homes of celebrities such as Simon Cowell, Miley Cyrus, Charlie Sheen, Ashton Kutcher, and Justin Bieber. Just this week, one day before the MIT incident, Clint Eastwood was added to this list.
The technique has been around for a while, and authorities have gotten to the bottom of it before (see this 2009 incident where a 19-year-old got an 11-year sentence for his efforts). The recent incidents involving Kutcher and Bieber (as well as a swatting targeted at an LA-area bank) were all eventually tied to an unidentified juvenile boy arrested on December 10. In each situation, the boy utilized a TTY, or a text telephone, designed to help those who are deaf, hard of hearing, or speech-impaired communicate through phone calls. Reports said the boy simply set up a fake account and began making the swatting calls to the LAPD.
The LA Times noted that several officers were injured during the string of calls. Officials clearly need to take all such threats seriously, but whenever mass tactics and firearms are brought into play, there's always a risk of things going wrong. "If these things continue, it's only a matter of time before a tragedy occurs," LAPD Commander Andrew Smith told the paper. "We've got talented detectives who are committed to catching people who put other people's lives at risk with these dangerous pranks."
Again, there's no confirmation yet that what occurred at the MIT campus was officially swatting perpetrated by some malicious, tech-savvy individual. But the modus operandi certainly matches this Hollywood swatting trend. Given the wide availability of text-to-phone technology—need a TTY adapter for your iPhone anybody?—and the ease with which hackers can anonymize calls, perhaps both the fake gunman's and real caller's motivation were one and the same. Luckily, no physical violence occurred. But some anonymous hacker could have been operating, or more appropriately swatting, out of retaliation for the Aaron Swartz fallout.
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