If someone was running around your neighborhood trying to take your belongings, would you feel bad if someone called SWAT on them? I don't see how intentionally deleting people's files is much different.
You know that's not what swatting is right? It's when you call the police and falsely claim that someone is raping children in their basement or some other horrible crime so that a group of men with guns show up and arrest them. I vehemently disagree with what this guy did but he doesn't deserve that.
Swatting is calling the police saying the person in question is holding someone at gun point. The goal is to have police armed with rifles break down the door and storm the building.
It doesn’t take much for police or the people inside to get shot and possibly killed during raids. Many innocent people have been severely harmed. Infamously, an officer threw a flash bang (an explosive grenade with burning magnesium) through a window into a crib with a child in it. Another fired shots that went through the wall and killed a woman in another apartment. At least one police officer was shot and killed by an innocent home owner in legitimate self-defense.
This isn’t something to take lightly. Whether it not it was the caller’s intent, they tried to get someone killed.
Yes and no, it depends on what you're considering petty property crime.
Someone breaking into my house to steal something while my family is home? They're getting shot in the forehead. I don't know their intentions, nor am I going to assume the best of intentions.
But I agree, SWAT in response to this is overboard. I would've been glad to see the author get proportionate repercussions (perhaps his Github/NPM accounts being deleted) as we know his intention, but putting his life in danger is too far.
