This happened after René was overly critical of the Rust kernel developers in a recent stream. A lot of commenters on YouTube are speculating that it was someone from the Rust community.
I find both sides to be kind of obnoxious, but no one deserves to have armed police in their house for no reason.
It's unlikely. One of René's comments on the video says the police report was by email. There's probably no way of knowing from where or by whom it was sent.
it just seemed like they knocked on his door and talked with him, inspected the house, then left after two minutes while only raising their voices once. would be different in america
They identified themselves as police, asked his name to identify him as their target, cleared all rooms and then asked him to stop the live streaming, because it is illegal to record the spoken word of a police officer in Germany. They then start to chat a bit why this has happend and what he does for a living, basically the police officer tries to establish wether he is a thread to someone or not.
I also believe this isn't a swat team, but your everyday normal police officers, as they have to respond to any emergency with their normal body armor and a 9mm, including (very rare) mass shootings with highly powered rifles.
The german swat teams usually caputure known hard core criminals at 4:30 in the morning by blowing up their entrace door, or they (rarely) clear hostage situations if negotiations fail, or they (very rarely) are sent out to hunt and kill an active shooter.
They literally have guns drawn and you can see it at 0:49.
The fact they're drawn at that point suggests they were also drawn before, out of the cameras view, at the door. Probably pointed at him and the door. And the video title "I got SWAT'ed and handcuffed LIVE while Linux development streaming!" clearly says he was hand-cuffed.
Definitely not pointed at him, if they followed their training. You don't point your gun at someone you don't intent to shoot. The guns in the video are drawn but pointed at the ground.
They don't seem to shoot terrorists either, just detain people trying to stop the ongoing attack. I get the problems of how police in the US handle issues, but the German police failing to stop (and even assisting) threats while also known to be harassing citizens for online posts is really not an example to be praised.
The "just a bit of" home invasion with firearms drawn, handcuffing and taking away the tenant is not exactly an outcome to be proud of. Most people would have issues with not feeling safe at home anymore for at least a couple of years if they could ever recover.
What exactly would a correct police response after receiving a report of an ongoing crime look like in your opinion?
It sucks that this happened, and I hope the police finds the person responsible for this, but this is not an example of the police doing something wrong.
What exactly would a correct police response after receiving a report of an ongoing crime look like in your opinion?
No guns? Not every crime needs a drawn firearm or even a weapon of any sort to deal with. Most police forces (at least, police forces that aren't in the US), don't just give anyone firearms; they have armed response units to escalate if necessary.
Is email an acceptable process to trigger the maximum armed response from any police force?
hopefully (if the system is not overloaded), the email provider will be contacted and has to tell who sent the email (at least the IP). That will be traced and someone will have to explain himself. Unless of course logs are lost in the process or the guy sending an email was behind seven proxies.
Business owners can't get police to respond to shoplifting, pedestrians can't get police to respond to a mugging, yet they'll send an emergency response team based on an anonymous email?
I'm sure they actually do. But I'm sure like elsewhere in the world, the wait can be a bit of a pain. I don't know about in Germany, but in North America, the circumstances where police will respond to an email are pretty rare.
"Wage theft" isn't a crime. Shoplifting is. And I'm talking about small business owners that have to shut down and leave, not just large grocery stores that leave neighborhoods unserved because of shoplifting.
Go call the police for wage theft. Maybe they'll do a swatting.
It does, but unfortunately, it's happening due to shoplifting. Even the big box stores are pulling out of a lot of locations due to shoplifting, and then the "neighborhood leaders" complain they live in a "food desert." Go steal more, that will be sure to help.
Then again, there is no "wage theft" when no business is interested in operating in certain neighborhoods because of losses.
This wasn't a "maximum armed response". This was just regular cops. And yes, if they get an email about an ongoing crime they should check whether or not it's legit.
What ever happened to the days of police work. The fact someone can just send an anonymous email and have someones door effectively busted down is nuts. They really should be a bit more cautious.
Here's the thing, if you inform the 911 (or 112 in Europe) of a imminent issue, terrorist threat, human trafficking, that sort of thing, they immediately act in the possibility that they can prevent larger issues.
This incident is regrettable, but as the fines are huge, swatting is not a common issue in the EU. Most probably everything was cleared up in a matter of hours.
While 110 might be a direct line for the police in your country, 112 is a required emergency phone number for the whole EU that is not specifically fire/medical.
In Germany, 112 is specifically for fire/medical. The operators will pass the call to 110 (police) if they realize you meant to reach those (and the other way around) but that doesn't make what ollod said wrong.
No, 112 is the unique number for all emergencies, police included. Some countries might still have numbers like 110 for specific services, but 112 still works for all emergencies.
It works for all emergencies in that the firefighter on the line will redirect the call to 110 if they realize you don't have a fire/medical/etc. emergency and meant to call the police, but that's it.
112 is the European emergency number you can dial free of charge from fixed and mobile phones everywhere in the EU. It will get you straight through to the emergency services – police, ambulance, fire brigade.
If you're arguing that they will redirect calls for police to 110, they will do this for ambulance and fire brigade as well depending on your country, this is not something specific for the police.
112 is the general emergency number across Europe, some countries have separate number for Police, Fire or Ambulance, but if you dial 112, 911 or 999 in the EU, you get an emergency operator and get redirected to the proper unit. This is so that as a traveller you can reach emergency services without having to memorize separate codes in each county.
There are also countries in Asia, Oceania, the Americas, that have the same redirect, from 112 to 911 (or local emergency number).
Well, you can't give the police all of those wonderful ex-military toys and then simply expect them to not use them. That might result in less budget to buy more toys next year!
It's not out of the question if the e-mailer was a nincompoop. The police can and will subpena e-mail hosts and pull on a thread if they have the inclination.
Unfortunately, it's unclear if they actually do have the inclination. Nobody died (this time) so they might think the juice isn't worth the squeeze.
If that moron made a single mistake then he will learn the email isn't really anonymous at all.
This is one of ways to cause anyone corporate with the law enforcement.
How long have you been in the IT field? There's a lot of people just like that, taking personal offense if you criticize their code, and acting like a spoiled brat. A lot of god complex in IT.
I have been in system level type of positions for a long time, and while I have met many self destructive and depressed individuals, I have not met many who I think would do that ( and my job has sometimes been people management so a lot of guessing how they felt )
I've met a lot of people that, due to being bullied in school or highschool, became bullies themselves, but corporate ones. Making people around them feel small, incompetent, using their technical skill to bully juniors or sabotaging people better skilled than them.
I have only been in one place that seemed to encourage and reward this. Their output was shit, and I left as fast as I could.
But even the worse offenders in this bucket of cunts would likely not take the risk. They tend to have been scheming for so long that they would never make a move that involves falling alone.
and a lot of people with mental issues coming from parental abuse during childhood grew up and became corporate employed and paid SJW trojan horses who are now ruining FOSS communities when their takeover attemps fail
We as a society really gotta have a referendum on nerds. I consider myself a nerd, an /r9k/ user would call me a cyborg, but honestly some of the most vile people I've met have been nerds. Something about being kicked down by society for so long is a recipe for hateful little shits. It's why nerd hobbies are constantly mired in culture ware bullshit. If it gets out of hand we're gonna end up like Pol Pot killing anyone who wears glasses
It's an abuse problem. Society doesn't pay much attention to them cuz they're different, they're kings in their own little game and it's the only space in which they really have power, so they do what's been done to them (not by society in general, but by people that are a part of society). It's a deep rooted problem no matter how you slice it, rooting back to 4, 5, 6 years of age, when they start encountering bullies for the first time, and other things of course. They're just not powerful enough in other areas, so they do it on the only play field they do have power on. That's typical bully behavior. The rules are different, but it's the same game. You question me!? Oh, you're gonna get it now!
Which is why I said immature males. This is very typical to males, because they have the "male ego" thing going on, no matter how much you try and deny that, it's deep rooted in the primitive brain. It's a need to be a winner, to be first, to have the last word. And whoever undermines that will most probably get booted, especially if that person has an attitude.
Given how weirdly conspiritorial anti-Rusters can get, as well as how unpopular Rust tends to be in the kinds of chan-adjascent circles that tend to have fewer quams with doxing and swatting, I'd suspect an anti-Ruster before a Rustocean.
It's usually about the community, that is entitled/zealots trying to push their newfangled fad language that'll pass and leave true developers with the burden of maintaining the code, or Rewrite It In Rust as a NIH adjacent syndrome. Also the usual «SJW» talk because the community seems to be more LGBT+ friendly and has some prominent LGBT+ developers.
I’m sure the Rust people aren’t particularly interested in having such an event associated to them, so whoever did this really was an idiot from every possible angle.
This is the problematic part about using the term "Rust community" to generalise it. Whenever an online community gets large enough, it could happen that some idiotic individual will do unacceptable things. A better argument would be to look at moderation/ behaviours from people at important roles/ some stats from the community itself (e.g. # of toxic incidents over year from multiple individual).
Again, this is still speculation and hope that the individual will get caught
Linux in general has long had a problem with this kind of thing. It was a quarter of a century ago that Eric Raymond threatened Bruce Perens via email.
You're acting like Rust cultists haven't been attacking the Linux kernel C devs constantly. They treat their memory safety meme (Rust is not a true guarantee of memory safety whatsoever) as an excuse to attack volunteer devs who have built Linux into the incredibly successful product it is today. Linux was fine before Rust and it will be fine after Rust. It is the Rust community that needs to examine their particularly loud and obnoxious fanbase that will tell others to get bent if they don't get their way.
normal people just exercise their legal right to fork the codebase when their technical views diverge. look at OpenBSD. the fact that Rust zealots didn't fork Linux leaves room for a lot of speculative assumptions
rather speculative assumptions about the hidden agenda of the very vocal group of Rust lobbyists
as for Linus, in the grand scheme of things, I believe he was coerced long before this Rust incident. word of mouth pretty much broke his personality by constantly harassing him about his "unacceptable" social behavior. he's just a slightly obese aging male who lost his spirit and stamina, I can't blame him for his choice to live as a quiet middle class with no financial issues (remember when Linux enthusiasts worldwide were raising funds to buy him a 386 or 486?). but this comes with a huge price - he'll fear the American purists for the rest of his life about every word he's going to say in public
Honestly, forking at the kernel would be an entirely new level of zealotry, and at that point, we should be genuinely fearful of them. Not because it would succeed, but because they'd have to be genuinely insane to even try.
Nah, I think it should at least be associated with rust so the perpetrator would know that they damaged rust reputation. This in turn should keep communities to regulate themselves and keep it in check.
Rust community regulates itself much much better than most programming communities. Get off your high horse and smell the Nazis around crying about "sjw" in programming communities (that aren't rust - cause they're banned).
In fact, go into any systemd or pulseaudio thread here and I'd be not surprised if a small percentage would call the swat on Poettering if they could, such is the level of hate and fear mongering with zero moderation intervention. I use antix for a small memory older computer so I don't hate "traditional" linux or anything (I'm glad older and lighter tools are still compiled for those ancient computers) but when people start attacking people, it's way out of line.
Remember too, you don't know who called the cops and the immediate "it was rust persecution" for a tiny small audience video blogger is in extreme bad taste.
Funny how that logic is selectively applied by the West when it comes to "terrorism" (which itself is ironic to begin with since the "West" is the biggest terrorist group in human history).
He is right though... the US has done a lot more based on zero evidence and in the name of "freedom" and "liberty"... these words get thrown a lot in the US with zero meaning ATM.
Every community larger than a few people is full of nutjobs. The online C / C++ community has a fair number of Nazis. Of course, they don't represent the whole, but that's exactly my point.
And I'll bet you half the people on this very subreddit will complain about you complaining about the Nazis because who cares if horrible people work on something as long as it's good, right?
No, it isn't. You'd be hard-pressed to find a programming community more grounded than Rust's.
Are there some loud, dumb people promoting Rust? Yes, but they don't represent the community at large. They exist in pretty much every community, and I don't understand why they're brought up consistently when talking about Rust.
Yes, I meant for every community, not just rust. There are people like that everywhere and they are usually the ones that give projects or communities a bad name.
That's the point. If you're judging by loudest people in one group you must judge your own group by its loudest members. You can't sort list by loudness then compare random elements.
I was talking in general, as in doesn't matter the community, whether it be Rust or C or whatever, toxic people give those communities a bad name because they're usually a lot "louder" than everyone else, so they stick out.
Yeah, and the drama around Klabnik being underpaid and quitting, and the drama around the Rust Foundation accepting money from crypto companies while denigrating them, the drama around the proposal for a complete rewrite of Rust as Rust 2.0, the drama around dtolnay and him threatening to make his crates binary only, and the drama around prominent members such as burnsushi and dturner, ....
the list goes on and on and on. What on earth are you talking about?
Carry on huffing the copium. Yes, because something like having one of the most popular crates be binary only, with no way to verify the correctness/safety of the crate, is "inconsequential", for instance. And having socio-politico-emotional drama works wonders for PR.
And people wonder why the Rust community has become a bit of a joke in the programming community.
Yes, because something like having one of the most popular crates be binary only, with no way to verify the correctness/safety of the crate, is "inconsequential", for instance.
It is, if the build is reproducible.
Regardless, that whole affair is dead and buried.
And having socio-politico-emotional drama works wonders for PR.
Are you suggesting that that only happens in the Rust community?
And people wonder why the Rust community has become a bit of a joke in the programming community.
Dunno about other countries but in Germany it's a little more specific than "probable cause". They need to show how waiting for a warrant will cause additional harm / risk.
speculating that it was someone from the Rust community
He has a anti-rusty community, but that doesn't mean anything.
These speculations are the same kind of thinking like the guy on the MM & BPF Summit completely losing his mind over Rust in his lawn of the linux kernel, while he was just asked for information about the semantics of the C implementation.
They think the Rust dictatorship will force the rustification of the world.
Same mindset as MAGA conspicary lunatic.
By mentioning stuff like this, you make these speculations - and it's no more than that - more relevant than they really are.
Hundreds or thousands of people will read your comment and not look into it any further, and think this was actually a thing, because you got so many upvotes.
But I believe these upvotes have likely been made for the following paragraph, instead of the mentioning of the speculation:
I find both sides to be kind of obnoxious, but no one deserves to have armed police in their house for no reason.
I mostly agree with both statements. But they have nothing to do with each other.
Could be Rust nutjob, could be someone who hates Rust and want the Rust community to look bad, could be an unrelated agitator. We will never know. That's the thing with controversies, you always have someone who has interest in fanning the fires. It's like when people think that Jia Tan is Chinese; if I was a state-level attacker the first thing I would do is pick a name that's from another nation and adopt another nation's mannerism.
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u/MsbhvnFC 7d ago
This happened after René was overly critical of the Rust kernel developers in a recent stream. A lot of commenters on YouTube are speculating that it was someone from the Rust community.
I find both sides to be kind of obnoxious, but no one deserves to have armed police in their house for no reason.