I think there will always be ways to make anonymous calls regardless of regulations, especially since telephone systems are on the internet, so are vulnerable to hacking and exploits. But if police can be held responsible for the death and injury they cause, then maybe they will stop going in guns blazing and remove the incentive for swatting in the first place.

Its crazy to me that people think its the telephone companies that need more regulations here and not the police. SWAT teams shouldn’t be going in guns blazing on anonymous calls and any injury or death should be solely their responsibility. By all means try to prosecute the people calling in the first case for misuse of emergency services, if you can identify them, but we all know who pulled the fucking trigger. Police can’t both get to decide that they get to selectively enforce the law and then take no responsibility when the injure or kill innocent people.

You keep your files safe by having backups. Multiple copies. Set up the backups to gets copied to another server or other system your regular user doesn’t have access to. Ideally, you follow the 3-2-1 backup standard if the files are important. That is 3 copies, on 2 different media, and 1 offsite. There are many ways of accomplishing that and its up to you to figure out what works best.

I use a Honeywell Z-Wave thermostat with Home Assistant. All local and I not only do I have schedules based on time of day, but it also adjusts the temperature based on if people are home or not.

I got a smart lock after realizing that we would simply forget to lock the front door sometimes since we typically leave via the garage. It’s connected to Home Assistant and now will lock automatically if no one is home.

Technically, I know that a smart lock is less secure, but in most real world scenarios, knowing that the lock will be locked when we are not home, on top of being notified if it becomes unlocked, I’d argue that it’s more secure now than when I had a dumb lock.