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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."
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."
I'd almost immediately consider anyone making a threat on Twitter, Facebook, or other social media site to be among the least credible threats. Anyone stupid enough to blab about those plans in public is too much of an idiot to get anywhere close to successfully accomplishing such a thing.
The more credible threats are the ones posted on message boards or in chat rooms or other small corners of the internet where like-minded folk gather. Most of what you find there will still be people bouncing words and ideas around their little echo chamber, but a few might be crazy enough to try. Even then, I'd be far more concerned with the people who makes threats about shooting up a mall or blowing up a school as that's a far more attainable goal on a much softer target.
Any threat worth devoting resources to stopping is likely to be using encryption or avoiding the internet as much as possible and trying not to draw attention to themselves.
A better system would be to look at the online history and behavior of any individuals who have committed acts of terrorism or engaged is mass shootings or other violence to see if you can identify future cases based on any common behavior. That would be a far better use of resources than keeping tabs on some Jimbo who's always spouting his mouth off about the gov'mint being evil.
The Secret Service protects more than the President. Plus, they're responsible for enforcing counterfeiting laws, which probably keeps them kind of busy, because counterfeiting has to be one of the most tempting crimes of all.
The reason this story highlights Obama is because he's got that pesky problem with his skin color that makes him a target for domestic terrorists like this guy:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Everyone should issue threats daily to kill the president. Everyone on earth has a responsibility to do this.
protect your privacy or you won't have any.