Linux dev swatted and handcuffed live during a development video stream — perps remain unidentified

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René Rebe, a 25-year veteran of Free and Open-Source Software development, was swatted and taken in for questioning.

René Rebe removing his microphone as the police demand entry to his office in Germany.
René Rebe removing his microphone as the police demand entry to his office in Germany. (Image credit: René Rebe)

Two days ago, tech streamer and host of Code Therapy René Rebe was streaming one of many T2 Linux (his own custom distribution) development sessions from his office in Germany when he abruptly had to remove his microphone and walk off camera due to the arrival of police officers. The officers subsequently cuffed him and took him to the station for an hour of questioning, a span of time during which the stream continued to run until he made it back.

René Rebe and fans of his work can only guess what motivated this incident. Unfortunately, the police seemingly have no idea who did it and acted based on a tip sent with an email. Finding the perpetrators could take a while, and options will be fairly limited if they don't also live in Germany. 

I got SWAT'ed and handcuffed LIVE while Linux development streaming! - YouTube I got SWAT'ed and handcuffed LIVE while Linux development streaming! - YouTube
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For those unfamiliar with René's body of work, let's get you caught up. Per his official About page, he's been contributing to Linux since as early as 1998 and started his own T2 SD3 Embedded Linux distribution in 2004, as well. Since then, his GitHub page has ballooned to nineteen public repositories, and he's known throughout the FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) community as a contributor to numerous major projects. 

Linux, FOSS, and other such communities are compelled by little-to-no profit motive, so in essence, René has been providing unpaid software development for the greater good for the past two decades.

Speculation is still abound as to who did this. Thirty minutes before the stream was interrupted, René did have to ban an angry troll, whom he mentions in a YouTube comment as one possible perpetrator. Others think someone from the Rust (programming language, not video game) development community was responsible due to how critical René has been of that project, but those claims are entirely unsubstantiated. 

Fortunately, René Rebe and his loved ones are safe in the aftermath of this incident, though they likely won't feel totally safe for quite some time. 

Christopher Harper
Christopher Harper
Contributing Writer

Christopher Harper has been a successful freelance tech writer specializing in PC hardware and gaming since 2015, and ghostwrote for various B2B clients in High School before that. Outside of work, Christopher is best known to friends and rivals as an active competitive player in various eSports (particularly fighting games and arena shooters) and a purveyor of music ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Killer Mike to the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack.

18 Comments Comment from the forums
  • ThomasKinsley
    OK, the Windows 11 team has definitely gone too far this time!
    Reply
  • ex_bubblehead
    The police (no matter the country involved here) went way over the top on this. An anonymous e-mail is nowhere near enough evidence to go arresting/detaining someone without a thorough investigation first. The only possible exceptions being domestic violence, child abuse or a homicide in progress.
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    ex_bubblehead said:
    The police (no matter the country involved here) went way over the top on this. An anonymous e-mail is nowhere near enough evidence to go arresting/detaining someone without a thorough investigation first. The only possible exceptions being domestic violence, child abuse or a homicide in progress.
    But those are the trigger words that swatters use, to get the major police response.
    Reply
  • ex_bubblehead
    USAFRet said:
    But those are the trigger words that swatters use, to get the major police response.
    All of which can be instantly determined to be BS when the officers arrive on scene and survey the surroundings and neighbors.
    Reply
  • punkncat
    I recall when this happened to Carey Holzman.
    Reply
  • Blastomonas
    This makes no sense. Surely any suspicion would have been cleared up at the scene.

    I would like to know what he was accused of to justify taking him away. More importantly, what will the punishment be for the guilty party?
    Reply
  • bit_user
    He posts on Phoronix as the user rene and I'm sure I'm not giving anything away by saying this, as his posts are quite open about being the maintainer of T2 Linux and including links to his youtube clips.

    Among his more interesting contributions are support for Linux on old MIPS-based SGI (Silicon Graphics) machines. I think he also maintains support for big endian on POWER cpus (most distros that support POWER use little endian).

    He doesn't strike me as one of the more hyperbolic posters on Phoronix, but he does have pretty strong opinions and isn't shy about them. I'm a little surprised and definitely sad that this happened to him. It's a shame the police didn't first do more to try and substantiate the claims in the email, although I understand they need to be biased towards action, in the event that imminent harm to someone is claimed.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    ex_bubblehead said:
    All of which can be instantly determined to be BS when the officers arrive on scene and survey the surroundings and neighbors.
    Yeah, I'm a bit surprised that they took him away for questioning. Maybe that's just standard practice for the police there. Otherwise, it would seem tricky to craft a swatting email that both triggers an immediate response, but also can't be trivially dismissed upon surveying the scene.

    Blastomonas said:
    I would like to know what he was accused of to justify taking him away.
    We'll probably never know and it really doesn't matter. It almost certainly has nothing to do with the reality of the situation, and disclosing this would only serve to educate more would-be swatters.
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    bit_user said:
    We'll probably never know and it really doesn't matter. It almost certainly has nothing to do with the reality of the situation, and disclosing this would only serve to educate more would-be swatters.
    He posted this on the YouTube video (translated via Google to English):
    I thought about making the incident available to a wider public on YT for 24 hours and ultimately decided to do so in order to document to us Germans that this is not a phenomenon limited to the USA and is dangerous. And also to document what kind of ignorant idiots there are in this world, and how completely inappropriately the police acted in my case in my opinion.

    When I opened the door there was a team of police officers with their weapons drawn and what looked to me like Tasers. When I heard “hands out of my pockets” in the video, I was immediately handcuffed!!! I had seen about 10 police officers in front of and in our office, and it wasn't until the following day that neighbors reported that the whole street was full of about 10 (or more) emergency vehicles right up to the next intersection!!! about 10 police cars, 2 fire departments, 1 ambulance, an emergency doctor etc...!!!

    According to the conversation with the police, an email was sent to the police and another to other rescue workers saying that I had killed my wife and now wanted to take my own life. I assume an email of the type Hans Musterman 6345234@xyz? Hardly anyone will provoke such an action with his real close @t-oline. I find it completely disproportionate that the police go out with such a number of devices and personnel to a registered company registered as a GmbH and not first google the name and company in order to presumably find my YouTube (and Twitch) activities directly.

    A team of two or four officers, and if necessary a test call to the company, would have been more than sufficient given such low-quality evidence. Likewise, neither to identify myself nor to put handcuffs on me immediately. The police should act more prudently and balanced here and not allow themselves to be paraded like this.

    But I would like to express my gratitude that I was otherwise treated reasonably humanely, that I survived it and that there was no other damage to property. It could have been much worse. If we had all just been on our lunch break, for example, the office would probably have been forced open by the fire department. To be honest, completely unacceptable for an IT company...! :-/
    Reply
  • bit_user
    JarredWaltonGPU said:
    He posted this on the YouTube video (translated via Google to English):
    Wow, thanks for posting.

    I don't agree with him, though. His take is understandable, given what he went through, but the question of what the police should do is best answered by trying to see it from their perspective and having a really hard think about the nature of police work. When I do that, speaking as one an outsider and with no connection to law enforcement, here's what I see.

    The police get a report of a violent incident, with a threat of further violence. Even though it's a threat of suicide, someone who's already committed murder and is still in a heightened state (possibly under the influence of substances) and armed is very much a danger to others. This demands immediate action, to prevent further harm. It's also plausible the victim could still be revived. So, they must decide whether to take the report seriously or not. If they think there's a realistic chance that it's true, they're compelled to act. The backlash for failing to act, not to mention the moral fallout, is not worth risking. In a situation like this, you can't realistically expect them to do research, because time is of the essence.

    Next, we must consider how they react, once they've decided to do so. Given a presumably armed assailant and at least one presumed victim, they must be fully prepared for the situation. Showing up insufficiently prepared could mean death or injury to one or more of the responders or other persons. Failing to arrive with preparations to provide life-saving care could result in preventable deaths.

    Finally, we should consider how police need to perceive risks. They deal with dangerous situations on a somewhat regular basis - it's an occupational hazard. The way probability works, if you roll the dice enough times, the chance of snake eyes becomes extremely high. Therefore, they need to over-prepare and be overly cautious every single time. It just takes one freak turn-of-events for members of their force not to come home to their family or for other preventable death or injury to occur. Therefore, I'm not surprised they took it seriously and I'm not surprised at the extent of the response.
    It seems to me that what's needed is actual preparation and systems for handing these types of reports. If whatever version they have of 9-1-1 services had resources to start researching the report concurrently with getting a response under way, then maybe they could downgrade the risk to a point where at least some of the response could be aborted. For instance, they could actually try to contact the reported individual and his wife. They should also know how to check if the email appears to be spoofed. Most email servers real people actually use employ authentication. If it purports to come from an authenticated server and isn't authenticated, then it's almost certainly a hoax. Also, they could try actually replying. If it doesn't bounce, then they could see whether the response aligned with the initial report. If they reply, whoever sent it might be dumb enough to slip up and give away that it's a hoax.

    So, I don't give the police a free pass, here. However, if it had been an actual emergency, those affected would probably be glad emergency services responded in the way they did.
    Reply