Patterico's Pontifications

10/5/2012

Some Inaccuracies in that NEWSWEEK/Daily Beast Swatting Story

Filed under: — Patterico @ 7:19 am



There are a couple of psychos out there who obsessively comb over my story for alleged inconsistencies, so I thought I would mention a few things the story got wrong. Because the presence of the inaccuracies is not a major point of my post, I present them on this separate page.

I didn’t say that the caller “spoofed [my] telephone” and I still don’t know whether that happened. There are two errors in the sentence that says police “dispatched a SWAT team to Frey’s Lomita home just south of Los Angeles” — it was, to my knowledge, not a SWAT team, and my home is not in Lomita. (However, it is in the jurisdiction of the Lomita Sheriff’s station.) I didn’t say I believe was “targeted last summer because of posts [I] wrote about a convicted bomber.” Instead, I explained (as I did in my initial post on the matter) that no arrests have been made, but that the FBI says swatting is often coupled with other harassment, and I have experienced a campaign of harassment as the result of the posts I wrote about a convicted bomber. (I specifically said that I was not making an accusation and I did not want to read that I had.) Also, the caller reporting a shooting at my address did not say he had “killed” his wife, but that he had shot her. I did not say I was “blogging” when the police showed up, but that I had stayed up late that night because I was blogging, and was on the phone when police showed up. Finally (and this, like many of the corrections, is very picky), I did not say the police were “pointing guns at [me] through a window” but that they yelled “Fire!” and when I looked around the corner they shined flashlights through the window of my front door and yelled at me to come out with my hands up. At that point, fearing that they were probably pointing guns at me though the window, I answered the front door, which is when I saw them pointing guns at me.

There may be other differences that I would notice if specifically asked about them.

2 Responses to “Some Inaccuracies in that NEWSWEEK/Daily Beast Swatting Story”

  1. I like your technique of posting this, but separately from your main page. I may copy it, in which case I’ll try to remember to attribute it properly.

    Beldar (d8195e)

  2. Also, I commend your attention to fine detail, and your ability to step outside your own perspective to predict some of the quibbles that others (including anyone who’s less committed to accuracy than you) might someday express.

    You’re certainly right that no one can ever anticipate all such quibbles. Nor should everyone always have to go to this kind of effort as a routine matter, even during important discussions or debates.

    But this is thoughtful and good work in my humble opinion. And I believe it justly bolsters your overall credibility in the eyes of the hypothetical disinterested and fair reader.

    Beldar (d8195e)

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