Couple swarmed by SWAT team after 911 'hack'
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A Washington state teenager is facing 18 years in prison on charges that he used his PC to access Orange County, Calif.&#39;s 911 emergency response system and convinced the sheriff&#39;s department into storming an area couple&#39;s home with a heavily armed SWAT team.Randall Ellis, 19, of Mulkiteo, Wash., is not only facing charges of unauthorized computer access, but he&#39;s also facing assault charges by proxy, meaning that authorities want Ellis to be convicted as if he, and not the SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) team, pointed weapons at the victims.The incident took place late in the evening of March 29, when Ellis allegedly used his computer to call the Orange County 911 dispatch and, during the course of a 38-minute telephone conversation, convinced dispatchers that he had murdered someone on the premises and was about to do it again.Within minutes, fire, police. and a helicopter team had been dispatched to the home of the Lake Forest, Calif., couple, whom authorities declined to identify.&quot;They surrounded the home, inside were a husband and wife and their two toddlers,&quot; said Farrah Emami, a spokeswoman with the Orange County District Attorney&#39;s office. &quot;The husband heard rustling outside of his home and believed it to be a prowler. He took a knife and went into the backyard. Instead of finding a prowler, he found a SWAT team pointing assault rifles at him.&quot;&quot;It really easily could have escalated into an innocent person being killed,&quot; she added. &quot;We&#39;re lucky that they didn&#39;t shoot him.&quot;Emami characterized Ellis as a &quot;computer hacker,&quot; but declined to explain exactly how the attack was carried out. &quot;One of the reasons that we&#39;re not disclosing exactly how he did it is because we don&#39;t want to teach other computer hackers how to do it,&quot; she said.Still, it&#39;s not clear that Ellis&#39;s alleged hack involved anything more complicated than tricking the 911 system into thinking he was calling from the Lake Forest couple&#39;s number. County officials said Wednesday that he did not exploit a technical flaw in the 911 system&#39;s software.The technique that Ellis used &quot;doesn&#39;t require any special skills,&quot; said Jim Amormino, a spokesman with the Orange County Sheriff&#39;s Department. &quot;The way he did it: I am not computer savvy, but I can do it.&quot;The March 29 incident cost the county an estimated $18,000, Amormino said.Low-cost calling card services such as SpoofCard have been available for years, allowing customers to make it appear that their calls are coming from any number they wish.In June, four people were charged in Texas with operating a chat line where they taught people how to make false 911 calls, sending emergency response teams to targeted victims, a practice known as &quot;swatting.&quot; In a June 12 swatting incident, a swatter called up Cleburne, Texas&#39;s 911 dispatch using a commercially available spoof card and Skype, then &quot;stated that he had shot and killed members of the family, that he was holding hostages, that he was using hallucinogenic drugs, that he was armed with an AK-47, and he demanded $50,00 and transportation across the U.S. border to Mexico,&quot; according to court filings.Authorities said that Ellis had made nearly 200 fake 911 calls to dispatch systems in California, Arizona, Washington, and Pennsylvania.He is set to be arraigned Monday in Santa Ana, Calif.
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Dutch police were laying siege to a house in The Hague today where an unknown number of terrorism suspects were holed up. Three policemen were injured by a hand grenade thrown when a raid was launched on the house, officials said.
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Messages follow American's beheading BAGHDAD The families of an American and a British engineer being held hostage by a militant group pleaded Tuesday for officials to help get the men released hours after the ...
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A team of kidnappers grabbed two Americans and a Briton in a dawn raid on their home on a leafy Baghdad street Thursday - a bold abduction that underlines the increasing danger
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Dutch police stormed an apartment and  arrested two people on Wednesday, ending a 14-hour stand-off  that began when suspects sought in anti-terrorism probe wounded  three officers in a hand grenade blast.
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Trio cooperates to build a secure municipal wireless network for emergency services.
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Imagine police are eavesdropping on a phone call between two conspirators plotting to blow up a building and cause major loss of life.
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The clever, cruel and deadly methods insurgents are using to counteract the U.S.-led surge  -  and the reasons their maneuvers are working
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A SWAT team that believed a gunman was holding hostages at a restaurant was able to free 14 people, but they did not find the armed man and were trying to determine whether a suspect got away or a hoax had been perpetrated, police said. No one was injured.
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A father of two in Germany stunned authorities when he chased down an auto thief by car, leapt onto the roof of the stolen vehicle and then phoned through instructions to police as the crook sped off with him.
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The Kuykendall family in Fircrest, Wash., claims that a hacker has been stalking them for four months through their camera phones, using the microphones in the phones to listen to them and the cameras to watch. They say that even when they turn off the phones, the hacker can turn them back on.
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Police were holding eight people on  Tuesday, at least four of them foreign doctors, over a  suspected al Qaeda plot against Britain that triggered a  manhunt reaching as far as Australia.
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Police were holding eight people on Tuesday, at least four of them foreign doctors, over a suspected al Qaeda plot against Britain that has triggered a manhunt stretching as far as Australia.
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Click here for shooters... Two men have been arrested after more than 40 police officers raided two addresses in Kent early this morning. Police were supported by officials from the Ministry of Defence.â¦
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Amid the horror, confusion and grief that followed their husbands' deaths in the 2001 terrorist attacks, Susan Retik and Patti Quigley were inundated with kindness.
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One Briton and two Americans were kidnapped early yesterday from their house in an affluent suburb of Baghdad in a well-organised operation which highlights the risks to foreign
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BAGHDAD, Iraq - A team of kidnappers grabbed two Americans and a Briton in a dawn raid on their home on a leafy Baghdad street Thursday - a bold abduction that underlines the increasing danger for foreigners in the embattled capital as violence soars ahead of national elections planned for early next year.    West of the capital, U.S...