On Saturday afternoon, the Michigan State Police became aware of a chilling message posted to a Russian “confessions” website.
“On October 4th, I’m going to the University of Michigan and blow every single woman I see with an AR-15,” the message began. “There is a violent pro-male revolution coming and you people better get ready for it.”
The would-be shooter said that he (I’m assuming it was a he) was inspired in part by incel idol Elliot Rodger — though he misspelled his name — and by the incel who carried out the recent shooting in Plymouth, England which left 5 innocent people dead, including a three year-old girl. “I watch (sic) Plymouth happen and I had a smile on my face,” he wrote. “It was the first time I smiled in years.”
Here’s a screenshot of the message, which has been removed from the site. (I upped the contrast to make it more readable.)
Luckily — for us if not for him — the would-be shooter was so derelict in his internet security that authorities were able to locate him in the real world almost immediately.
Not so luckily for us, the FBI dismissed the threat as an empty one, and there’s no indication he was arrested.
According to the University of Michigan police in a press release,
The University of Michigan Police Department, with the assistance of the FBI, has identified an out-of-state residence from which the threat was posted. FBI agents interviewed a resident of the home, who they assessed to be responsible for the message.
Based on the investigation, there is nothing to indicate imminent harm to our community.
In another press release, they insisted that
[T]here is no current nor pending threat to the community from the individual responsible for the post. During the interview, agents assessed the individual had neither the means nor the opportunity to carry out the threat.
And the threat itself wasn’t enough for an arrest? Apparently not.
According to FindLaw,
Federal law prohibits transmitting “any threat to injure the person of another” and penalizes such threats with five years in prison. But not all threats are created equally, and the Supreme Court has determined that only “true threats” can be punished. This generally means that the threat must be credible and specific enough that a reasonable person would be threatened.
I guess they decided it wasn’t a “true threat” because, I don’t know, he didn’t come to the door carrying an AR-15 and a map of the University of Michigan campus.
Let’s just hope he never has the means and the opportunity to carry out a similar threat in the future.
Follow me on Mastodon.
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies on support from you, its readers, to survive. So please donate here if you can, or at David-Futrelle-1 on Venmo.
That makes no sense. It was still working on my phone when I tested it there. And the problems I get on the PC point to a local problem with name resolution. Unless three different DNS servers being run by three different unrelated organizations in two different countries are all conspiring to refuse to resolve one particular website, the problem has to be local to my machine.
Besides, it has to be local to my machine if I’m to have any recourse, and since I’ve done nothing wrong to deserve being cut off from nearly everyone I know, I am indeed to have some recourse. The alternative would be that I have no due process rights and can be, for all intents and purposes, sentenced to solitary confinement without a trial, without a defense, without the opportunity to cross-examine the witnesses against me or to have my own experts examine the evidence against me, without even having been told what I’m even accused of; and surely that can’t be, at least not for a white cishet male passing person in a developed country that is generally regarded as among the least despotic and autocratic countries in the world …
Facebook is down for me too.
Wish I’d realised it was just that before rebooting everything!
Rather than get bogged down in a pointless debate over debugging methods, symptoms, causes, and other such stuff, how about we skip to the part where one of you tells me how to quickly get it working again and I then do that and carry on with my day?
@Surplus, news sites (e.g. I happen to have seen it on The Guardian; I presume the same story is also coming up on major news sites in different countries) are confirming that Facebook is down everywhere (as are the associated WhatsApp and Instagram).
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/04/facebook-instagram-and-whatsapp-hit-by-outage
There’s nothing any end users can do except wait for them to fix it, which I assume they will do as soon as they can since at the very least the outage must be costing them several fortunes in advertising revenue. (wonder what it’s doing to their share value … couldn’t happen to a nicer company?)
@ surplus
I think it’s just skipping straight to the rest of the day bit. Sounds like it’s going to take a bit of fixing.
But presumably if no-one can access it then nothing will have been posted so we’re not missing anything.
About the Facebook outage:
https://youtu.be/KLqH8p1QVpY
Ars Technica coverage:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/10/facebook-instagram-whatsapp-and-oculus-are-down-heres-what-we-know/
This always seems to happen in these situations. Instead of useful responses, all I get is people taking the other side and supporting whoever it is who is keeping me away from my friends! Why does no one ever take my side, even alleged leftists against a big bad corporation? As soon as that corporation does something hostile to me, bam, they side with the corporation and argue that I should just let it walk all over me instead of doing anything to fight for my right to communicate with my friends.
I don’t want that. I want my access restored, and I want my access restored immediately. And I have an utterly airtight moral argument that this should be done, to wit, I didn’t do anything wrong to deserve having my access revoked to begin with.
Airtight.
And still people won’t take my side.
What the hell is wrong with people?
… and why the hell would something broken in a machine on Facebook’s land cause Google‘s 8.8.8.8 server to behave incorrectly? It’s a huge security hole at Google if a third party can screw up a Google server just by pushing the wrong buttons on a machine in their own data center hundreds of miles away.
Explanation from a network professional:
https://twitter.com/ErrataRob/status/1445129721168158726
@Moggie:
In any event, there simply is no excuse for this. None whatsoever. I demand that those responsible be punished. That means not just firing whatever cack-handed idiot “flubbed a BGP configuration change” or whatever actually is going on, but firing everyone whose screwups or negligence has made this take any longer to fix than it takes to log in as administrator and hit “control-Z”. And firing whichever Google engineer left their 8.8.8.8 server vulnerable to Facebook shenanigans, too. None of these people should be allowed anywhere near a computer that other people than themselves depend on ever again.
@Surplus
Facebook hasn’t done anything *to* you. Some facebook employee fucked up and broke their system. It happens. This is affecting everyone (or at least everyone in several countries).
From the article opposablethumbs shared:
The reason you’re getting weird DNS errors is because people at facebook where changing their entire network structure and messed up something with the DNS.
The article additionally states that this issue is causing facebook employees issues with remotely connecting to the servers to fix the issue. They can’t connect, they can’t undo the issue. And honestly, what the fuck do you expect them to be punished for? You don’t pay for this service. This is not a life supporting service that you *need*. Mistakes happen, have some grace for the human being that made that mistake.
I don’t want to get into the details of this. In part because I don’t really understand them, but mostly because your current reaction to this situation is something that happens very often and in this particular case is a bit shitty. No one here wants to hurt you or is against you. We’re just responding with facts as best as we can understand from our experiences and the news. Your comments are often interesting to read, but you also often become very aggressive in your belief that we all want to harm you and that everyone is out to get you. This is not true and is draining (at least for me) to constantly see how much you blame people here for things that are out of your and their control. A lot of commenters here have tried to help you or try to share their own experiences, but you often respond by being kind of mean.
Look, it sucks when you’re out of contact with people and it’s an inconvenience. But a thread about a woman being raped and murdered does not seem to be the appropriate place to complain about facebook being down.
EDIT: ^ Thought I was in a different thread. But this still does not seem the appropriate place to discuss facebook issues.
Pandemic.
I’m enjoying the Facebook holiday. It’s nice not being reminded how many QAnons, rude people, and antimaskers live all around me.
How many red flags do they need????
Oh wait. It’s only women he’s threatening. If he was threatening to shoot up a precious Confederate statue, or a valuable gun, then law enforcement would have moved heaven and earth to protect it.
Women in danger is just status quo as far as the authorities are concerned.
Facebook is up again, but it doesn’t look like it’s fully functional. (I got an error message trying to do a relatively simple thing.)
Huh, Facebook FUBARing explains why a load of my What’s App messages haven’t sent and why my Instagram wouldn’t update. Ah well, no harm done. People make mistakes *shrugs*. It’ll get fixed, Facebook relies too much on advertising from their platforms to be down for long. It’s not like the internet is entirely dead, or I wouldn’t be able to get up to date on pasts here and comment, put some money of my gas and electric meters, or do my Morrisons shopping order. Or check the news. All things I have done since my What’s App and Instagram started playing up. Essential stuff hasn’t been affected.
Ooh, my messages just went through, What’s App seems to be working again. Nice. It wasn’t important, just a message to my allotment group about possible frames for the raised beds from Suttons, but I thought about it so I had to send the message before I forgot.
Back to the original topic: It concerns me that now the incel has had a visit from the FBI and got away with making a threat, he will either make threats again in future which will be ignored and then one day he’ll actually kill someone, or he’ll realise he needs to up his security for future threats and it won’t be seen/reported/investigated, and he’ll kill someone. It’s frightening that a person can threaten mass murder but not be taken seriously, given the history of incels murdering people, and the easy access to weapons in the US. Even increasing the security at UofM would be a step in the right direction. Is he a student? If not, do student’s have I.D.s they could be asked to wear so anyone not wearing one would stand out to staff? It can’t be that hard to do something to scare the little shit off.
I must confess I am quite enjoying this outage. I’m not so fussed about Facebook; I can just ignore that anyway. But we use WhatsApp a lot for work stuff; and now I can genuinely tell people I couldn’t access documents. So I now have a nice excuse for a bit of a skive.
I suppose I could remind them they could use LinkedIn or just regular email; but I’d hate to appear presumptuous; or vaguely competent.
(It’s an expectation management thing)
@North Sea Sparkly Dragon
I want to say this is nothing normal, as society has always upheld White supremacy and patriarchy but to be honest, it certainly feels like it’s getting much, much worse. Ever since the Trump presidency these people discovered that they could pretty much get away with hate crimes. The Trump presidency itself carried nothing short of the very definition of genocide against Latinos with their forced sterilizations and non-consencual hysterectomies (performed by someone who wasn’t a licensed OBGYN on top of that).
The worst part is that the liberals/centrists/democrats are not only actively enabling them but making sure this shit goes unpunished. And, as Rachel Maddow has pointed out, this is having the effect of emboldening these far right terrorists. I’m really not surprised he wasn’t arrested, but how far is this going to go before something gives out? Are we ever going to see a Nazi or incel brought up on terrorism charges?
OT: I’m not sure if any of you has checked out the video Innuendo Studios put out on the whole Gamer Gate scandal. It’s a deep dive that has the receipts on EVERYTHING, from beginning to end. I thought I knew everything about that shit show, turns out it was an even bigger shitshow:
I think that idea is massively problematic. The basic privacy implications are already troubling, as is the general authoritarian-police-state atmosphere that “papers, please?” would create.
Now add in that it’s easily defeated (just wear a bus pass or other random unrelated ID-looking thing and you’ll pass from a distance, i.e. “until it’s too late”) and that it’s likely to out a subset of trans people (those who haven’t yet been able to replace all IDs that use their deadname — a feminine-presenting person walking around with a badge saying “John Something” is going to be instantly outed to anyone who gets in reading distance of the thing) …
If history is any guide, about 22 more years. That was, after all, the elapsed time from the Beer Hall Putsch to the Nuremberg Trials.
Just read another (less technical) explanation of what happened to Facebook:
https://twitter.com/alexhern/status/1445130867073032195
Gotta say, as an IT professional, I buy this. It’s not just a Facebook-specific kind of stupid. It’s the kind of stupid mistake that happens when your business model relies on people being overworked all the time, which describes a LOT of corporations.
FB screwed itself over so badly the employees couldn’t even get in the doors of the building.
Their internet savvy is right down there with all the fascist places that have been thorougly pwned of late.
@Vicky P: thanks for that link. It’s perfect. Follow-ups were funny too.
@Chris: To spend more time with his… lobsters?
@SurplusToRequirements:
Sometimes I worry that you don’t think anybody but you is really *real*.
@Surplus
You seem to be under the misconception that tech gigacorporations run their infrastructure in a responsible, robust and professional manner, and not held together by spit and chewing gum on the backs of overworked interns.
You should also know well that Facebook’s goal is to make money off advertisements. They don’t care if you can contact your friends or whatever.
A bit of advice (why do I bother), make sure to keep several channels of communication available to key people you need to be in contact with, even if it’s just plain ugly email. For cases like this one. It’s a hassle, I know.
Great, I think you figured out the problem with corporate-run Internet. Now what do we do about it?
If your answer is “demand to see the manager to fire all the workers that caused me this inconvenience”, it’s probably wrong.
Sheesh, I did not expect to see “you’re taking the enemy’s side!” when people cite basic facts, that don’t happen to align with your preferred conspiracy theory, on this side of QAnon, but here we are.
Again.
@Nequam: Might be a little unfair.
I’ve seen people who have both lower-than-average levels of stress tolerance, and highly stressful lives (and unfortunately, the former tends to lead to the latter, especially if one is lacking in a robust social and financial support network). When a disruption to their life pushes the stress above their ability to handle, they go into a sort of tunnel-vision panic. Nothing matters except getting rid of the disruption as fast as possible. Long-term consequences barely matter. Other people’s issues and limitations barely matter. Almost no price is too high… and if someone else must pay it, then so be it. If that other person can’t or won’t, then they’re very bad people out to hurt them. They may even become fixated on solutions which won’t work and won’t help themselves or anyone, and refuse to listen to alternatives which could actually work (if there even are any). And then, when they finally regain some measure of self-control (anything from a few hours to a few weeks, depending on the duration and scope of the disruption) usually they feel bad about their behavior during the panic period, which doesn’t help their stress levels.
I haven’t seen anyone develop the degree of paranoia which Surplus to Requirements exhibits sometimes, but then again, anyone that isolated is someone whom it’s extremely unlikely I’d ever meet them. I am, however, going to be sympathetic on one point: As much as anyone can be said to “deserve” anything, no one deserves to live under conditions which people with low stress tolerance and/or high self-maintenance costs can’t function, regardless of whether one has to deal with such things oneself*. Rock bottom should be significantly higher than it is, unless you really work at digging deeper holes.
*If for no reason other than there’s no guarantee that any particular person is immune to declining health and/or ability.
I for one didn’t even notice the outage, as I use Facebook so rarely.
@ Snowberry
Well, if we are going to talk about Surplus like he isn’t even here, I’d point out he gives no indication he is on board with the whole “bad about their behavior during the panic period” thing.
No, his usual behavior is to spew technical jargon most people here don’t even understand, demand a solution AND advice on suing someone to make them suffer for his problems, get upset when there is any sort of pushback, accuse people of taking the big government/corporation’s side, and generally behave like an incel expecting his “airtight moral argument” for his god given rights to sexy time to be addressed via the government.
It’s frustrating, it’s full on definition of insanity every time it goes down, and nobody here is able to connnect with him or change anything. We ARE all cogs in an uncaring machine and all the complaining on the internet or arguing isn’t going to change that.