Secret Service Agents Stake Out the Ugliest Corners of the Internet

HughPickens.com writes: Josephine Wolff reports at The Atlantic that Secret Service Internet Threat Desk is 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. The difficulty is trying to figure out which ones should be taken seriously.

The Secret Service categorizes all threats, online and offline alike, into one of three categories. Class 3 threats are considered the most serious, and require agents to interview the individual who issued the threat and any acquaintances to determine whether that person really has the capability to carry out the threat. Class 2 threats are considered to be serious but issued by people incapable of actually follow up on their intentions, either because they are in jail or located at a great distance from the president. And Class 1 threats are those that may seem serious at first, but are determined not to be. The overall number of threats directed at the first family that require investigation has stayed relatively steady at about 10 per day — except for the period when Obama was first elected, when the Secret Service had to follow up on roughly 50 threats per day. "That includes threats on Twitter," says Ronald Kessler, author of In the President's Secret Service. "It makes no difference to [the Secret Service] how a threat is communicated. They can't take that chance of assuming that because it's on Twitter it's less serious."

Comments

Re:Presidential Protection

[twotacocombo]

And how many assassination attempts have been made on recent presidents? Zero.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts_and_plots

Obama's on the list. So is Dubya. And Clinton. And Bush Sr. And Reagan, obviously. And Carter. On and on.

Just because nobody has recently pulled something as high profile as a Hinckley doesn't mean there haven't been attempts.

They do so much more!

[devloop]

SS agents are also versed in the arts of:

Deflecting possible Colombian hooker attacks on the president.
Drunk driving and crashing cars into WH's barriers and then destroying video evidence.
Sexually harassing female staff.
Committing arm burglary with their state issued 357 caliber guns.
Being totally ineffective at stopping mentally disturbed individuals to fence jump into the WH's lawn.
Letting armed ex felons ride the same elevator with the POTUS.

But yeah, by all means, focus your efforts on Twitter.

Re:They do so much more!

[jklovanc]

Being totally ineffective at stopping mentally disturbed individuals to fence jump into the WH's lawn.

The president was on the other side of the building boarding a helicopter and in no danger. The fence jumper was in view of at least one agent at all times. He was stopped long before he encountered any non-security personnel. Their other option was to shoot him when he jumped the fence and then the headline would have been "Secret Service Murders Mentally Ill Veteran". Yes, he should not have gotten into the building but he was stopped soon after. The layered security worked.

Letting armed ex felons ride the same elevator with the POTUS.

If you are talking about this you should know a few points.
1. While he had been arrested he was not convicted.
2. We do not know what the arrest was for. It could have been something non-violent.
3. He was a security guard for the CDC where the POTUS was visiting. He had therefore gone through the security screening of at least the CDC.
4. He only came to the attention of the Secret Service because he would not stop photographing the POTUS when asked.
This guy was in no way a threat

BTW, one can not be an ex-felon unless pardoned.

Re:Presidential Protection

[bobbied]

Well, there have been some pretty dangerous attempts which where literally "long shots" and one guy who actually got INTO the Whitehouse before he got stopped by the cleaning staff...

But the Secret Service has apparently been effective at disrupting plots before they had a reasonable chance of success. One could argue that it's only been dumb luck and dumb people who are trying, but I'm inclined to think the Secret Service is doing a good job overall.