(Washington Post) A potentially lethal form of prank-calling could soon be banned with stiffer penalties, under a piece of legislation that just passed a crucial vote in Congress.
The bill takes aim at a tactic known as "swatting" — where a prankster calls the police and alerts them to a bomb threat or other criminal activity going down at the target's house. Unable to tell the difference between a fake threat and a real one, the authorities send a SWAT team to storm the victim's abode, guns drawn. And the victim has no choice but to endure the abuse.
It's a form of primarily Internet-driven trolling that's become all too common, lawmakers say. Look it up on YouTube and you'll get tens of thousands of results like this one.