Four times in the past year, the parents, teachers, and police officers of the small, neighboring Minnesota cities of Cloquet and Esko thought that their children were going to be murdered. There were bomb threats in the spring. A man claimed to have seen a backpack with wires in it at Cloquet and Esko high schools. According to police records, he called again in July to report a bomb at the college. The man described by the Midwestern dispatch as having a thick Middle Eastern accent had reported that 10 people had been killed at a high school.
The calls were all fake. It was all hands on deck for the chief of police in Cloquet. The officers ran to their cars, threw on their body armor, and fired their rifles. They may have blasted through stop signs and traffic signals while racing as fast as they could to face what could have been the worst thing in their life. It is dangerous. Randall says it's a waste and we feel powerless. When someone on the other side of the world is able to take advantage of us, they are taking away our power and control.
According to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, at least 26 schools in the state have received false reports of bomb threats or active shootings. The calls are part of an ongoing spree of hoax calls that police say are likely coming from overseas. According to police records obtained by WIRED, the hoax caller began in March and could be linked to bomb threats called into dozens of colleges during the summer. In the second half of September, more than 90 false reports of active shooters being made to K-12 schools in 16 states around the country were tracked by WIRED. There are still calls. Dozens of schools in New Jersey, Florida, California, South Carolina, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Connecticut have been targeted in the last three weeks.
The most frustrating thing for parents is that no one can do anything to stop it. Why can't this be traced and why can't it be stopped?
These questions are being answered by law enforcement. They think they know how the person made these calls. They don't know who is behind the attacks or why they are happening. What law enforcement can do to stop it will be determined by the answers.
Text now and investigate later.
In an October memo the FBI sent to schools in New York, the agency describes a male with a heavy accent behind a lot of the hoax calls. Federal and local law enforcement in several states say that the caller appears to be located in Ethiopia and is using Voice over Internet Protocol to make threats to schools.
The phone numbers used in the hoax calls were traced to a service called TextNow, which allows users to place anonymous calls. TextNow customers don't need a credit card or address to sign up, they just need an email address. The company's information is limited by that.
TextNow has provided investigators with subscriber information. The email account behind at least one of the hoax calls was connected to TextNow, which is owned by the government of Ethiopia, according to the memo.
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