{"id":13653,"date":"2018-10-23T10:45:03","date_gmt":"2018-10-23T18:45:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2018\/10\/23\/news-7420\/"},"modified":"2018-10-23T10:45:03","modified_gmt":"2018-10-23T18:45:03","slug":"news-7420","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2018\/10\/23\/news-7420\/","title":{"rendered":"Forging a Relationship With Tyler Barriss, the Internet\u2019s Most Hated Swatter"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Credit to Author: Brendan Koerner| Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2018 10:00:00 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

I understand that <\/span>it\u2019s easy to dismiss Tyler Barriss as a monster who should never be granted a platform to tell his own story. He took pleasure in terrorizing strangers with his hoaxes, and his alleged actions\u2014calling authorities in Wichita, Kansas, and pretending that he was holding a family hostage\u2014led to an innocent man being shot dead<\/a> by police last December. Barriss' reaction to Andrew Finch\u2019s death has betrayed a chilling lack of empathy.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ve dedicated much of my career to listening to troubled souls like Barriss because I believe their experiences, however unsettling, force us to ponder fundamental questions about our obligations to one another. Only by peering into the abyss of human malice can we divine how best to help those struggling with their demons, how we can muster the strength to forgive even the truly lost, how we can grapple with our own dark impulses. And so when I began reporting my account of the fatal Wichita shooting last spring, I felt compelled to seek out Barriss so we could hear his voice.<\/p>\n

In the first letter I sent to Barriss at the Sedgwick County Detention Facility in Wichita, I explained that I\u2019d become interested in swatting\u2014the term for tricking a SWAT team into storming a rival\u2019s home\u2014while working on a story about the Xbox Underground<\/a>, an international hacking crew that was obsessed with Microsoft\u2019s flagship gaming console. (Disputes over money between the group\u2019s leaders and some affiliates had led to multiple swattings.)<\/p>\n

In his initial reply, neatly written in pencil on ruled paper, Barriss said that he would remain silent until I provided him with proof of my identity\u2014his time as a swatter, a pursuit that relies on deception, had made him cynical. My editor agreed to send Barriss a letter affirming that I was who I said I was; I chipped in with a business card and a photocopy of my WIRED work ID. Satisfied by this evidence, Barriss began to answer my many questions\u2014sometimes with humor, sometimes with a trace of annoyance, but always with apparent candor.<\/p>\n

Barriss seems to have spent time reflecting on his psychological flaws during his months behind bars. He confessed that his need to feel important had led him to \u201ckind of became addicted\u201d to swatting in the spring of 2015, and that he\u2019d foolishly bragged about his illicit exploits on Twitter because he was desperate \u201cto prove I was the real deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also marveled at the fact that his bomb threats were not 100 percent effective. \u201cBelieve it or not, there\u2019s been times where [sic] a particular location that I attempted to evacuate did NOT evacuate, which often blew my mind,\u201d he wrote. \u201cHow do you get word there\u2019s bombs inside and NOT get the entire place cleared?\u201d<\/p>\n

Though his Twitter accounts are filled with hyperbolic boasts about his brilliance, Barriss was often self-effacing in his letters\u2014or at least halfway so. \u201cI\u2019m really not all that great with computers,\u201d he wrote, for example. \u201cI\u2019m no hacker, but I\u2019m quite clever on Windows and I know how to bypass things\u2026My abilities are nothing special.\u201d<\/p>\n

As our correspondence progressed, we began to exchange more personal information. I shared with him that I, too, had grown up in Los Angeles, and knew people who\u2019d gone to the gifted-and-talented middle school that he\u2019d once attended\u2014and later evacuated with a bomb threat. Barriss, in turn, opened up about the death of his father and his interest in the occult. (He asked me to opine, for example, on the evident similarities between a popular Satanic symbol and the Google Play logo.)<\/p>\n

The more we revealed about ourselves, the more I was tempted to view him with some measure of sympathy: Perhaps he was a bright enough man whose immaturity had curdled into nihilism, a process catalyzed by the constant glow of his computer screen and the vulgar antics of his Halo<\/em> crew.<\/p>\n

But then I\u2019d remind myself that such feelings can be an occupational hazard for journalists who cover crime. Our job is to get people to open up about what\u2019s inside their hearts, but the techniques we use to do so can sometimes leave us vulnerable to getting sucked into the orbits of malevolent characters. Years ago, for example, I interviewed a Pennsylvania serial killer who told me a story about tricking his best friend into digging his own grave. It wasn\u2019t until I was driving out of the prison\u2019s parking lot that I realized, much to my shame, that I\u2019d laughed along with him as he told the ghoulish tale.<\/p>\n

In a perfect world I\u2019d keep up my dialogue with Barriss over the next several years, and thus be able to determine whether he\u2019s capable of earning a shot at redemption. But odds are I\u2019ll have to let our relationship lapse, as there are other stories calling my name and only so many hours in the day. One of journalism\u2019s harshest realities is that no matter how intense our involvement with our subjects, the relationships we build usually end up more transactional than we might care to admit<\/p>\n

In this episode of 'Technique Critique', crime scene analyst and investigator Matthew Steiner examines forensics investigations in crime scenes from movies and television to see how accurate they are. Crime scenes are from The Wire, NCIS, Zodiac, The Flash, The Boondock Saints, Heat, Seven, The Other Guys, How to Get Away with Murder, CSI: Miami, The Dark Knight, Dexter, Insomnia, True Detective, Bone Collector, Criminal Minds, Family Guy, Iron Man 3, Minority Report and more.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.wired.com\/category\/security\/feed\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Credit to Author: Brendan Koerner| Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2018 10:00:00 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

Journalist Brendan Koerner strikes up a jail-cell correspondence with a man charged with instigating a fatal shooting. \u201cOnly by peering into the abyss of human malice can we divine how we can muster the strength to forgive the truly lost,” he writes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[10378,10607],"tags":[17573,714],"class_list":["post-13653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-security","category-wired","tag-backchannel","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}