At ten o’clock on a Sunday night, while her children were in bed, flashing
police lights suddenly flooded Congresswoman Katherine Clark’s home. Clark looked outside and saw police cruisers barricading both ends of her street and officers with “long guns” facing her home. The officers informed Clark that an anonymous tipster with a digitized voice had reported that Clark’s home was under attack by an “active shooter.” As a vocal activist against cyber
harassment, Clark knew that she had fallen victim to “swatting”—an aggressive
form of online abuse in which perpetrators falsely lure police into dispatching
heavily armed tactical units to victims’ homes.
