Technology can be used to combat the rise in "swatting" incidents that politicians on both sides of the aisle have been victim to in recent weeks, Rep. Brandon Williams, R-N.Y., told Newsmax on Thursday.
Swatting is the practice of placing a fake emergency call as a prank and having police show up at the victim's house.
There are three things that can be done to combat swatting incidents such as the one that recently took place at his home, Williams told "National Report."
"I actually come out of the technology industry," he said. "I think there are three things that we can do. One is that is there any way to have real time authenticity? If a call is coming from a local network, the telecom network, then maybe it has more veracity than if it's just coming in a voice over IP [Internet Protocol], over the Internet that's not traceable, that has no information attached to it.
"So, I think there's something that could be done just to say better tools to identify the authenticity of a call. It's not a guarantee, but it would be a good tool.
"The second is ... tagging different locations, their address, that are possible swatting targets, in this case my home, but it's also schools and synagogues and churches and judges and law enforcement officials, as well as elected officials," the congressman continued. "Certainly, it's not just me and so tagging in their system so they know and have a point of contact like they did with me that they called."
"The last thing is we need better forensic tools to be able to investigate the origin of these calls," he added. "We know that they're coming in from overseas. We know that they're using voice over IP and other Internet technologies to hide and mask their origin and that information.
"So I think there's a number of things that can be done."
Williams also discussed the swatting incident that occurred at his home on Christmas Day.
"I received a call from the local sheriff saying that they had a shooting at our home and they had cars en route and I said, 'Hey, look, everything's cool here,' but I tried to make it easy on them when they got here so that they knew that we were safe and secure," he said. "I appreciate that they responded very quickly, but, most importantly, I appreciate that they called in advance to deescalate before it became a crisis."
In a post on X, the New York Republican said whoever was behind the incident "hoped police might accidentally kill me and my family."
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Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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