Secret Service Dither Over Bitter Twitter

Monday, March 22, 2010

Tweeting - it sounds so harmless; but a Tweet is not just a Tweet when you are threatening to kill the President of the United States.

According to Adam Ostrow , that's what two Twitter users found out after publishing tweets reading “ASSASSINATION! America, we survived the Assassinations and Lincoln & Kennedy. We’ll surely get over a bullet to Barrack Obama’s head” and “You Should be Assassinated!! @Barack Obama.” Apparently, the two were frustrated over the passage of the Health Care Reform Bill.

The Secret Service takes threats such as these seriously and after being told there would be a federal investigation, both Twitter users tried to back track from their remarks. According to ABC News , the two were frustrated over the passage of Health Care @THHEE_JAY was taken offline and @Solly_Forrel posted "Let us all renounce the harsh rhetoric.....Several including myself have used inappropriate language. Let's remain civil!"

This is an example of how social media does carry weight. We've all been cautioned about Facebook; how employers are monitoring and what you view as your innocent party pictures could hamper your efforts to snag that new job or promotion. Moms used to issue the warning "remember to wear clean underwear in case you're in an accident"; nowadays the warning is "remember, once you put something out on cyberspace it can come back to haunt you." The person showing up at your door, could be a Federal Agent.

2 comments:

Julia Robinson March 23, 2010 at 11:25 AM  

Wow! This is shocking, and quite frightening! I had not heard about these twitter threats before I read this blog post.

This is just another of millions of exmamples of how our world is shifting in to a different type of social media. People are now making threats against the President via Twitter? This is a serious subject, but kind of amusing at the same time.

Kari March 24, 2010 at 6:34 AM  

Social media has definitely changed the way people are hearing and reading about the news. I strongly promote the First Amendment and the right to freedom of speech, but if you are going to say or threaten something so strongly, you better be ready to handle the conscequences of your actions. This is just another example of people speaking (or in this case, writing) before you think.

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