What's swatting?
Remember the “phone phreakers?” The term hit our national consciousness in the 1970s, when a magazine reported on a small group of techie troublemakers who were hacking into phone companies’ computers and making free long-distance calls.
Today, there’s a new, much more serious twist on this old crime. It’s called “swatting,” and it involves calling 9-1-1 and faking an emergency that draws a response from law enforcement—usually a SWAT team.