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posted by cmn32480 on Friday July 24 2015, @05:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the it-really-isn't-a-secret-anymore-is-it? dept.

Sifting through those messages to determine which, if any, need to be taken seriously is the responsibility of the Secret Service Internet Threat Desk, a group of agents tasked with identifying and assessing online threats to the president and his family. The first part of this mission—finding threats—is in many ways made easier by the Internet: all you have to do is search! Pulling up every tweet which uses the words "Obama" and "assassinate" takes mere seconds, and the Secret Service has tried to make it easier for people to draw threats to its attention by setting up its own Twitter handle, @secretservice, for users to report threatening messages to.

But if the Internet makes it easier to find threats directed at the president, it can also make it harder to figure out which ones should be taken seriously. The sheer volume of threatening messages online, the lack of context, and the ease with which users can shield their identities all contribute to the challenges of assessing online threats. One series of tweets addressed to @POTUS that caught the Secret Service's attention—at least enough to warrant an in-person visit from an agent—came from a user with the handle @jeffgully49 and included a picture showing a doctored version of the president's campaign posters with his head in a noose and the word "HOPE" changed to "ROPE." The messages were apparently posted by Jeff Gullickson of Plymouth, Minnesota, who was later visited at his home by a Secret Service agent. "The agent from the secret service was cordial," Gullickson wrote in an email to MPR News, adding that the agent just wanted to be sure his tweets were not serious threats.

Isn't the first rule of Fight Club supposed to be, "Do NOT talk about Fight Club!"?


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  • (Score: 2) by VortexCortex on Saturday July 25 2015, @12:44AM

    by VortexCortex (4067) on Saturday July 25 2015, @12:44AM (#213393)

    Or...we could just eliminate these jobs, because they are so totally unnecessary. What is this, yet another job security program for the unemployable?

    The "false positive" rate is atrocious. Additionally, I find it hard to believe that the "cordial visit" is typical. Furthermore, the program sounds like an excellent way to find a patsy for your assassination attempt. A little covert psychological harassment and maybe the individual would actually lash out, and the resulting media spin could help manufacture consent for almost anything. I wonder, with a scope that includes protecting the treasury and a name like "Secret Service" are they guarding officials or secrets?

    IMO, TFA is likely being used as part of a propaganda piece to help manufacture public consent for action to be taken against "extremists" discovered via Internet. When taken in the context of this recent video calling for internment of US dissidents [youtube.com] it makes a bit more sense. Hello Netizen! Economy got you down and you think the government's policies are to blame? Vehemently disagree with fighting another oil war to prop up the Petrol Dollar? It's FEMA Fun Camp time! [youtube.com] Heh. The president will be disappointed if you're tardy for your Prolonged Detention. [nytimes.com]

    In today's politics one can scarcely take a story at face value. One must consider it in the greater context to understand why it exists in the state controlled media. [youtube.com] Always ask, "what agenda might this article further". Even better: Develop search and indexing tools for political analysis to ferret out the BS with fact checks and quickly discover common threads of agendas... TFA follows the common thread for the current political narratives: The Internet is dangerous & Basement dwelling dissenters belong in FEMA camps.

    That might sound far fetched until you consider [wikipedia.org] your US history. [wikipedia.org] Surely such a drastic measure would only be taken in times of war, right? Well, the USA's involvement with Syria could soon drag us into war with their ally, Iran, and Russia by proxy (since that was apparently the plan all along [globalresearch.ca]). Russia and China are trying to back oil with a different currency -- which threatens the Petro Dollar and may destroy the US economy. NORAD has retreated back under their EMP shielded mountain. [defensenews.com] Germany has unsuccessfully tried to get at its gold in the Fed. [bloomberg.com] Texas wants its gold back too [cbsnews.com], just in case... of secession? [news4sanantonio.com] The Fed has relocated from New York to Chicago [reuters.com] in preparation for some nebulous "natural disaster". There are quite a number of other events which may point to increased likelihood of something happening starting mid to late September, 2015 (ending of Jade Helm 15 [washingtonpost.com]). Military "exercises" sometimes just happen to already be mobilized for "unexpected" disasters. Strap yourself in, we may be in for a bumpy ride. Note: A rationalist is absolutely certain of nothing; My position is that it's better to be prepared than caught off guard -- This is even more rational given that powerful people seem to be of the same mind. [zerohedge.com]

    In any event, with the government being extremely paranoid [theguardian.com] right now may not be the best time to make jokes online that could be taken out of context or draw unnecessary attention to yourself. Myself? Well, I'm against self censorship. If no one holds up our end of the deal and exercises their freedom of speech then the brave souls who were sacrificed for such rights died for nothing. However, what is abundantly clear is that many powerful people do not consider the job of detecting and squashing unrest "so totally unnecessary". I mean, that's why your cell phone has a kill switch. [sophos.com]

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