NY TIMES Wrong About Dealing With School Threats

WASHINGTON - Sept. 7, 2024 - PRLog -- The Times, in If a Threat Is Not a Crime, Can the Police Prevent a School Shooting? (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/07/us/police-school-shootings.html), seeks to  justify the decision by the police to take no further action on a report that threats were posted from a computer in the home of the suspected shooter because he denied making them..

But public interest law professor John Banzhaf disagrees, noting that making such a threat is a serious crime in Georgia, and that police can and should conduct a reasonable followup investigation even when a suspect denies suspicions backed up by evidence.

If what the Times implies was in fact the law, every person with a computer found by authorities to have transmitted violent child porn, but who denies having sent it,, would not be subject to any further investigation, explains Banzhaf.

The suspect was questioned by police about threats to shoot up schools, but no action was taken because the boy denied that he had posted any threats.  Thus the police  concluded that they did not have probable cause to take any further action.

But the fact that the boy denied the claim, despite strong evidence that the threat came from a computer at his home, doesn't mean that the police are helpless because there's no probable cause.

The threats in question were posted on Discord in an account reportedly associated with an email address linked to Colt Gray, but the police appeared stumped because records indicated that the account had been accessed from various locations outside as well as inside Georgia.

But skilled investigators should be able to uncover the user's real location through methods like network traffic analysis and digital forensics, says Banzhaf, who says he may be one of the oldest living hackers.

He was also one of the first academics to warn about the danger of Russians hacking our presidential elections, writing as early as August of 2016 that "This Presidential Election Could Be Hacked, Perhaps by a Foreign Power" and "Hacker with Off-the-Shelf Malware Can Steal More Votes Than Any Corrupt Politician." Russian Hackers Used GWU Events, Professors To Influence Election (https://www.valuewalk.com/russian-hackers-influence-elect...)

In addition, he says, the police could have seized any computers in the home, and had experts conduct a digital forensic analysis (using computer forensics) to see if the threats were typed on and sent from it.

In any event, it seems clear that the police should have done a more thorough interrogation when the threats were first posted.

Such a follow up investigation probably would have saved four lives, argues Banzhaf.

The law professor also points out that making such threats is a crime under Georgia law - GA Code § 16-11-37 (2023):

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