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School Shootings Are Technologically Obsolete

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COMMENT: In past pro­grams, we have cov­ered school shoot­ings, one of the most high pro­file forms of may­hem in our benight­ed soci­ety. (We began our cov­er­age with Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M 55–Part 1, Part 2.) With the growth of high-tech, they have now become tech­no­log­i­cal­ly obso­lete.

School ter­ror­ism may become increas­ingly pop­u­lar as anony­mous com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies and anony­mous pay­ment sys­tems like Bit­coin con­tinue to roll out. The psy­cho­log­i­cal effect of hav­ing chil­dren ter­ror­ized in this man­ner should not be under­es­ti­mat­ed. It will dri­ve peo­ple into the arms of fas­cism, as they cry out for “some­one to do SOMETHING!”

“Tele­phone Bomb Threats Prompt Numer­ous School Evac­u­a­tions and Lock­downs in Va., N.J.” by Mori­ah Balin­git and T. Rees ShapiroThe Wash­ing­ton Post; 3/4/2016.

 Police in North­ern Vir­ginia and New Jer­sey are inves­ti­gat­ing bomb threats that were called in to dozens of schools Fri­day morn­ing, threats that prompt­ed evac­u­a­tions and lock­downs.

Many of the schools received the threats via auto­mated phone calls — known as robo­calls — a method that has become increas­ingly com­mon for school bomb threats nation­wide and one that is dif­fi­cult to track. A rash of robo­calls led to evac­u­a­tions and lock­downs of 13 schools in three states in Jan­u­ary, none of which were found to be cred­i­ble..

At least sev­en schools in North­ern Vir­ginia received bomb threats Fri­day morn­ing, prompt­ing some to evac­u­ate and oth­ers to lock down. Falls Church City’s lone high school, George Mason High, was evac­u­ated after it received what school offi­cials described as an “auto­mated bomb threat” by phone short­ly before noon.

Fair­fax Coun­ty Police are inves­ti­gat­ing bomb threats that were called in to three pub­lic schools and one pri­vate school between 11:22 a.m. and noon, but author­i­ties declined to say whether those threats were from robo­calls. Police deter­mined them not to be cred­i­ble and Fair­fax Coun­ty Pub­lic Schools offi­cials decid­ed to con­tinue class nor­mally at the three high schools that received threats.

“Police are inves­ti­gat­ing and have deter­mined the threats are not cred­i­ble, and are intend­ed only to dis­rupt school oper­a­tions,” said Mary Shaw, a school sys­tem spokes­woman. “We do not believe any FCPS stu­dents are at risk and we are con­tin­u­ing with nor­mal school oper­a­tions at all of our schools for the remain­der of the day.”

...

Bomb threats also were called into schools in a dozen dis­tricts in New Jer­sey at around 11 a.m. Fri­day, dis­rupt­ing school for thou­sands of stu­dents, accord­ing to a report in The Record.. The prob­lem has become so severe that the Bergen Coun­ty Prosecutor’s Office has decid­ed to host a sym­po­sium to dis­cuss how to han­dle such threats. It was the sec­ond time in a week that robo­call bomb threats shut down mul­ti­ple schools in New Jer­sey.

Robo­calls are becom­ing an increas­ingly com­mon method of deliv­ery for school bomb threats, said Amy Klinger, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor at Ash­land Uni­ver­sity in Ohio and a co-founder of the Educator’s School Safe­ty Net­work, a nation­al non-prof­it school safe­ty orga­ni­za­tion.

Klinger said that Inter­net-based orga­ni­za­tions charged the equiv­a­lent of $50 in bit­coins to cre­ate a bomb scare using auto­mated phone calls, which account for 13 per­cent of all threats, accord­ing to her school secu­rity research.

“Schools are real­ly caught in this dilem­ma of what do we do? Do we ignore it? But you can’t,” Klinger said, not­ing that some schools receive mul­ti­ple threats in a sin­gle day and evac­u­ate their build­ings for each occur­rence, cre­at­ing sig­nif­i­cant delays dur­ing the aca­d­e­mic day. “That’s a real­ly dan­ger­ous prece­dent to say we’re just going to stop respond­ing. So it’s real­ly kind of a Catch 22 that schools have found them­selves in. We need to respond but every time we do it just gen­er­ates more threats.”

Klinger, in a recent school secu­rity report, wrote that bomb threats against schools have increased sig­nif­i­cantly in recent years. So far dur­ing the 2015–2016 school year, Klinger found that a total of 745 bomb threats had been made against schools, a 143 per­cent increase com­pared to the same time peri­od dur­ing the 2012–2013 school year.

In Jan­u­ary, schools nation­wide received 206 bomb threats, the high­est num­ber ever record­ed, Klinger found. Her research also deter­mined that threats were made indis­crim­i­nately, with 48 of the 50 states in the coun­try record­ing school-based bomb threats.

“It’s not going away,” Klinger said. “The only option is to empow­er schools to be able to han­dle these things.”

“Klinger said that Inter­net-based orga­ni­za­tions charged the equiv­a­lent of $50 in bit­coins to cre­ate a bomb scare using auto­mated phone calls, which account for 13 per­cent of all threats, accord­ing to her school secu­rity research.“
At $50 a bomb threat, it’s almost kind of amaz­ing that the trend isn’t grow­ing even faster than it already is:

...
Klinger, in a recent school secu­rity report, wrote that bomb threats against schools have increased sig­nif­i­cantly in recent years. So far dur­ing the 2015–2016 school year, Klinger found that a total of 745 bomb threats had been made against schools, a 143 per­cent increase com­pared to the same time peri­od dur­ing the 2012–2013 school year.

In Jan­u­ary, schools nation­wide received 206 bomb threats, the high­est num­ber ever record­ed, Klinger found. Her research also deter­mined that threats were made indis­crim­i­nately, with 48 of the 50 states in the coun­try record­ing school-based bomb threats.
...

 

Discussion

One comment for “School Shootings Are Technologically Obsolete”

  1. The Simon Wiesen­thal Cen­tral called for Attor­ney Gen­er­al Jeff Ses­sions to cre­at­ed a task force to inves­ti­gate bomb threats against Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ters fol­low­ing a fourth wave of threats in 10 states on Mon­day:

    The Huff­in­g­ton Post

    Jew­ish Human Rights Group Calls For Spe­cial Probe Into Anti-Semit­ic Bomb Threats
    The Simon Wiesen­thal Cen­ter urged Attor­ney Gen­er­al Jeff Ses­sions to make this a big­ger pri­or­i­ty.

    By Matt Fern­er
    02/21/2017 08:56 pm ET

    A lead­ing Jew­ish human rights orga­ni­za­tion called on Attor­ney Gen­er­al Jeff Ses­sions to cre­ate a spe­cial task force to inves­ti­gate the bomb threats tar­get­ing Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ters around the nation.

    In a let­ter sent Mon­day, Rab­bi Mar­vin Hier and Rab­bi Abra­ham Coop­er, dean and asso­ciate dean of the Simon Wiesen­thal Cen­ter, wrote of their “grow­ing alarm” over the waves of threats since Jan­u­ary. They urged Ses­sions to estab­lish a task force “with the assign­ment of iden­ti­fy­ing and cap­tur­ing the cul­prit or cul­prits who are now ter­ror­iz­ing Amer­i­can Jew­ry.”

    At least 11 JCCs in 10 states received threat­en­ing phone calls on Mon­day. It was the fourth series of such mes­sages since the start of the new year, rais­ing the total num­ber of inci­dents to about 70 aimed at almost 60 JCCs in 27 states and one Cana­di­an province.

    Anti-Semit­ic hate crimes com­prise the largest por­tion of reli­gious­ly moti­vat­ed attacks in the Unit­ed States. The rab­bis, point­ing to a “super­charged anti-Semi­tism” spread­ing on the inter­net and social media, wrote that they are “deeply wor­ried” that the bomb threats could “inspire more dan­ger­ous tar­get­ing” of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty.

    The series of bomb threats against the JCCs is “unprece­dent­ed,” said Hei­di Beirich, direc­tor of the Intel­li­gence Project at the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter.

    “I’ve been work­ing at SPLC since 1999. I’ve nev­er seen a string of attacks like this that are tar­get­ing the same kind of insti­tu­tion in the same kind of way. This is new,” Beirich said.

    It remains unclear who is mak­ing the threats, if it’s one per­son or a group, but they have rat­tled com­mu­ni­ties around the U.S.

    Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, after mak­ing sev­er­al state­ments that were crit­i­cized for being dis­mis­sive of con­cerns over ris­ing anti-Semi­tism, final­ly said Tues­day that the JCC threats are “hor­ri­ble, and it’s going to stop and has to stop.”

    The FBI and the Depart­ment of Jus­tice have said they are “inves­ti­gat­ing pos­si­ble civ­il rights vio­la­tions in con­nec­tion with the threats.”

    ...

    “At least 11 JCCs in 10 states received threat­en­ing phone calls on Mon­day. It was the fourth series of such mes­sages since the start of the new year, rais­ing the total num­ber of inci­dents to about 70 aimed at almost 60 JCCs in 27 states and one Cana­di­an province.”

    70 bomb threats aimed at Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters this year alone cer­tain­ly seems like the kind of sit­u­a­tion that could jus­ti­fy a spe­cial Jus­tice Depart­ment task force. But, of course, there’s the obvi­ous ques­tion of whether or not Jeff Ses­sions and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has any real inter­est in inves­ti­gat­ing crimes that are almost cer­tain­ly per­pe­trat­ed by Trump’s base. Although giv­en that Trump claimed that acts of anti-Semi­tism were false flags done by his polit­i­cal oppo­nents dur­ing his bizarre rant about how he was the least anti-Semit­ic and racist per­son you will ever see — a state­ment that prob­a­bly filled the white suprema­cists doing it with glee and only encour­aged them to do it more — it seems like he should want to see a suc­cess­ful inves­ti­ga­tion that dis­cov­ers the cul­prits and, in turn, dis­cov­ers they’ll all Trump oppo­nents try­ing to gin up anti-Trump sen­ti­ments.

    So we’ll see if there real­ly is a sig­nif­i­cant task force assem­bled that actu­al­ly unmasks the per­pe­tra­tors. But it’s also going to be impor­tant to keep in mind that in our cur­rent tech­no­log­i­cal envi­ron­ment, where robo-call-bomb-threat-for-hire ser­vices exist and cre­ate effec­tive­ly unsolv­able crimes, it’s entire­ly pos­si­ble that the per­pe­tra­tors of the cur­rent wave of bomb threats can’t be caught. Unless the per­pe­tra­tors some­how screws up (which they clear­ly haven’t done so far):

    The Huff­in­g­ton Post

    Here’s One Of The Bomb Threats Jew­ish Cen­ters Across The Coun­try Are Hear­ing
    Calls like this have come in waves, and there’s no sign they’ll be stop­ping.

    By Andy Camp­bell
    02/03/2017 03:06 pm ET | Updat­ed Feb 04, 2017

    This hoax has become all too real.

    One or more peo­ple are call­ing in bomb threats to Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters across the coun­try. The calls have come in waves: Cen­ters in mul­ti­ple states received at least 16 threats on on Jan. 9, more than two dozen on Jan. 18, and on Tues­day, anoth­er hand­ful of cen­ters were evac­u­at­ed after sim­i­lar calls.

    Police haven’t found any evi­dence that the threats are seri­ous, but the sheer vol­ume of them has left Jew­ish lead­ers and local author­i­ties fac­ing a dif­fi­cult and ter­ri­fy­ing dilem­ma.

    On one hand, the Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ter Asso­ci­a­tion — which over­sees most of the cen­ters affect­ed — doesn’t want to cause pan­ic by sound­ing the alarm over a hoax. On the oth­er hand, local police are exhaust­ing their resources search­ing build­ings for bombs that don’t exist, the FBI hasn’t yet iden­ti­fied any sus­pects and Jew­ish lead­ers are under­go­ing train­ings to pre­pare for the next wave of threats.

    The FBI won’t com­ment on the inves­ti­ga­tion it launched on Jan. 18 after the sec­ond wave of threat­en­ing calls. It’s unclear how close agents are to nar­row­ing in on a sus­pect or how long Jew­ish cen­ters can expect to grap­ple with an unknown ene­my.

    But there are clues hid­den in the chaos. The Huff­in­g­ton Post reached out to experts to break down the anato­my of a bomb threat and under­stand why it’s so dif­fi­cult to track down a sus­pect.

    What do the bomb threats sound like?

    We don’t know how many peo­ple are behind the threat­en­ing calls or whether they are part of a coor­di­nat­ed effort, but the Jew­ish Tele­graph­ic Agency obtained a record­ing of a call made dur­ing the Jan. 18 wave that match­es the descrip­tion of oth­ers around the coun­try.

    ...

    In the record­ing, a voice says: “It’s a C‑4 bomb with a lot of shrap­nel, sur­round­ed by a bag (inaudi­ble). In a short time, a large num­ber of Jews are going to be slaugh­tered. Their heads are going to be blown off from the shrap­nel. There’s a lot of shrap­nel. There’s going to be a blood­bath that’s going to take place in a short time. I think I told you enough. I must go.”

    Pre­vi­ous­ly, offi­cials said that at least some of the calls fea­tured a voice dis­guised by a pitch-chang­ing pro­gram that sounds female and could be a record­ing (or “robo­call”).

    Kent Gib­son, a free­lance foren­sic audio ana­lyst who works with author­i­ties in the Los Ange­les area, was able to elab­o­rate.

    After a quick analy­sis of the record­ing, Gib­son said the caller was like­ly male, pos­si­bly with an accent from Brook­lyn or the sur­round­ing New York area, and used a down­load­able appli­ca­tion to dis­guise his or her voice. It’s unclear whether the call was record­ed or made live.

    “It’s inter­est­ing that this per­son nev­er men­tions the name of an estab­lish­ment — you could use that record­ing any­where,” Gib­son said. “If some­body had a beef with a par­tic­u­lar cen­ter, they would prob­a­bly say, ‘I’m gonna blow up this cen­ter on this date.’”

    Gibson’s analy­sis hasn’t been ver­i­fied by police, but it pro­vides a win­dow into an oth­er­wise opaque inves­ti­ga­tion.

    What dif­fer­ent things do inves­ti­ga­tors con­sid­er?

    After a bomb threat, inves­ti­ga­tors first iden­ti­fy whether the threat is cred­i­ble, accord­ing to Tod Burke, a pro­fes­sor of Crim­i­nal Jus­tice at Rad­ford Uni­ver­si­ty and a for­mer Mary­land police offi­cer.

    None of the calls made to Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters have been deemed “cred­i­ble” so far, but that doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean they’re low­er on the FBI’s pri­or­i­ty list, he said. Inves­ti­gat­ing a ser­i­al hoax­er is a bal­anc­ing act.

    “If you put it on the shelf, you’re allow­ing it to keep going and encour­ag­ing peo­ple to con­tin­ue with their anti-Semit­ic rants … and threats,” he said. “But the longer this goes on, the more prob­lem­at­ic it becomes because you’re also using resources to inves­ti­gate.”

    Just like the JCCA, Burke also wor­ries about copy­cats and the idea that a sus­pect can use pan­ic to gar­ner more atten­tion.

    How do author­i­ties find a sus­pect?

    It’s dif­fi­cult, but far from impos­si­ble, to iden­ti­fy an anony­mous caller. Cell phones and inter­net-con­nect­ed calls can make it hard­er to track a phone num­ber, so good old fash­ioned police work is still your best bet, Burke said.

    Author­i­ties will be look­ing at the length of each call and what time zone it like­ly came from, and will dig for clues like accents or back­ground noise. They’ll seek out dis­grun­tled employ­ees or oth­er motives for the crime. They can also delay an arrest to sur­veil a sus­pect and see if they’re work­ing with any­one else.

    Some sus­pects are just eas­i­er to nail down than oth­ers.

    Late last year, a man named Nor­man Lamar Truss alleged­ly sent an email to a news sta­tion claim­ing that bombs would go off in coun­ty cour­t­hous­es sur­round­ing Hous­ton. The Precinct 1 Constable’s Office imme­di­ate­ly used Truss’ IP address to track him down, not­ing that “the crim­i­nals weren’t too bright” for using email. Truss was even­tu­al­ly charged with mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion and may yet be charged with ter­ror­is­tic threats, an office spokesman told Huff­Post.

    It’s hard to imag­ine that author­i­ties aren’t close to arrest­ing some­one for the bomb threats, giv­en how many calls were made. But callers like these can slip through the cracks.

    Police have yet to iden­ti­fy a sus­pect who was send­ing threat­en­ing let­ters to U.S. mosques late last year, for exam­ple, even after the Los Ange­les Police Depart­ment said it was “days away” from track­ing down a cul­prit in Decem­ber. The LAPD didn’t imme­di­ate­ly return calls for com­ment on Fri­day.

    “It’s dif­fi­cult, but far from impos­si­ble, to iden­ti­fy an anony­mous caller. Cell phones and inter­net-con­nect­ed calls can make it hard­er to track a phone num­ber, so good old fash­ioned police work is still your best bet, Burke said.”

    Yep, it’s not impos­si­ble to iden­ti­fy an anony­mous caller. Maybe they’ll leave enough clues that allow inves­ti­ga­tors to piece things togeth­er:

    ...
    Late last year, a man named Nor­man Lamar Truss alleged­ly sent an email to a news sta­tion claim­ing that bombs would go off in coun­ty cour­t­hous­es sur­round­ing Hous­ton. The Precinct 1 Constable’s Office imme­di­ate­ly used Truss’ IP address to track him down, not­ing that “the crim­i­nals weren’t too bright” for using email. Truss was even­tu­al­ly charged with mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion and may yet be charged with ter­ror­is­tic threats, an office spokesman told Huff­Post.
    ...

    Or maybe they won’t:

    ...
    Police have yet to iden­ti­fy a sus­pect who was send­ing threat­en­ing let­ters to U.S. mosques late last year, for exam­ple, even after the Los Ange­les Police Depart­ment said it was “days away” from track­ing down a cul­prit in Decem­ber. The LAPD didn’t imme­di­ate­ly return calls for com­ment on Fri­day.

    So giv­en the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the individual(s) behind the cur­rent wave of threats aren’t going to sud­den­ly make a mis­take they haven’t made yet (they’ve got­ten away with 70 threats so far with­out get­ting caught), we prob­a­bly should­n’t be sur­prised if this crime is nev­er solved and not just due to the fact that the Attor­ney Gen­er­al appears to har­bor white nation­al­ist sym­pa­thies. Both pol­i­tics and tech­nol­o­gy could be get­ting in the way of solv­ing this, which also means we prob­a­bly should­n’t be sur­prised if it con­tin­ues. Indef­i­nite­ly.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 22, 2017, 4:04 pm

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