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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."
But I wasn't an assassin, I swear!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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.
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.
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.
>> Ugliest Corners of the Internet...online threats to the president and his family
How is this uglier than child prostitution, the rapid increase of murder in inner cities, or...?
I get that some level of executive security is probably a good thing, but does the Secret Service really need 1,500 people on staff?
It's not so much that it's *worse* than those things. It's certainly not worth than sex trafficking, for example, where you get these kids raped fifteen times a day. (Read "River of Innocents" to learn more, for example, or Kevin Bales' or Victor Malarek's books).
Fighting over what's "worst" or "ugliest" or so on is like fights over whose genocide is worse, or who has the most messed up family. At the end of the day it's pretty silly and it's usually a waste of time because you could be trying to deal with those problems rather than fighting about how to classify them. So let's accept "ugliest" as a rhetorical inaccuracy and move on.
Because a lot of it pretty goddamn ugly, and they should be able to say it. Reading a single white supremacist website and it's like eating this vile filth that makes you want the whole country to take a shower. It must suck to be the SS agent who *has* to read that shit for his job. I'm sure you professionally detach a bit while having to pretend to relate and are actually able to go after some of the fuckers, so it's not as terrible as it could be, but it's still pretty ugly.
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.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
To the extent that people make torture, snuff (murder), and animal- and child- or other-abuse movies for entertainment or financial (vs. war/propaganda) purposes and distribute those on the Internet, then the topic of this article is far, far from the "ugliest corner of the Internet."
People who enjoy others' pain and can't or won't follow the laws regarding torture and abuse need serious mental and/or spiritual help. Those who go out of their way to profit from this kind of thing likely need spiritual help as well, independent of any criminal penalties.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
True, although I should point out that to make a shot at about a mile away, you need to be very, very good at that anti-vehicle rifle. Of course, there are people who can, but they are very serious business types of former military snipers.
The SS does check angles to ensure that the President is not rolling up on somewhere that you could get a one mile shot on a target. And when they can't they make sure of that, they try to make sure that no one knows the exact drop off points well enough to plan to be in such a place ahead of time.
>> What "rapid increase of murder"??
How's life in the country? Here's some 2015/2014 stats...it's becoming a major political issue for those of us in and around cities.
Chicago: 26 percent increase - http://www.chicagotribune.com/...
Milwaukee: hit 2014's total in July! - http://www.jsonline.com/news/c...
Baltimore: deadliest month in 40 years - http://www.baltimoresun.com/ne...
New York: Mayor under fire for murder jump - http://www.politifact.com/pund...
Amazingly enough, people that go through with these mass shootings post their plans to social media more often than not. It sounds crazy, but you have to be a little crazy to want to do shoot up a kindergarten or assassinate the president in the first place. The problem is of course the noise level. We had the same problem after Columbine when suddenly all of those teenagers weren't just sullen outcasts, they were potential madmen. Correlation is not causation.
I read the internet for the articles.
I think you are correct about who caught him, but the point remains valid... This guy managed to breach several layers of security and enter the Whitehouse before being stopped, but he WAS stopped, even though the president and his family where not there.
All indications are that the Secret Service remains effective at protecting the president, despite somebody taking pot shots that nobody noticed for awhile, one yahoo making it into the residence and all the other "scandals" which really are personnel issues for the most part.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
This is a fairly typical story on a right-wing pseudo-news site: http://www.wnd.com/2015/07/ban...
Now, let us sample some of the comments that could be interpreted as threatening:
"I dare you to come to Texas and tell Texans that you are going after their guns."
"We need to undo everything he put in place while in Office. he is a lying muslim and traitor. We also need to immediately remove ALL of his appointees on day one of the next time we return to a Presidency. This muslim theocracy he works under is illegal."
"Maybe while he's out of the country, we can talk our military into not letting AF One back INTO the country. Tell them to land somewhere else, not AMERICA. Keep him out, Maybe even the Secret Service will do their job of their oath of office to protect our nation from within (obama) and outside. Then he can stay in Kenya, without his protection and live it up! We'll send for AF 1 later, or even blow the damn thing up."
"I hope the military and the police departments do not follow his orders when POTUS decides to grab our guns. I do not want to have to shoot a fellow American, but I have that constitutional right."
"MOLON LABE! Send your storm troopers, you skunk, wannabe Adolf Hitler and you Communist wannabe Josef Stalin. See what happens when free people rise up and take back their country in a revolutionary war against tyranny. Oh did I forget also call you "King Barak the Only"?"
"One if the best reasons for our 2nd Amendment is that we will be able to defend ourselves when the Obama goons come after us!!!"
"omuzloid wont stop until the heart beat of america stops.....this sodomite muzloid is not fit for the office of the president and our elected servants in dc are cow towing to this loathsome peice of trash in the hopes of secureing the illegal power that he has grabbed the republicans are just as guilty as the demicrats.....we need to clean house senate and the presidency and we need to do this before omuzloid can create more havoc and strife!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"I look for Obama to go after our guns through his illegal abuse of executive authority. We are the only ones who will stop him and that might not be pretty."
"He wants a revolution, so he can martial law! I say lets give it to him! "
"I want to send my sincere condolences to the families of the officers sent to try and take my GUNS.When our brave first responders follow illegal orders against there oath of office , I know they know better. Someone has to stand up and be first , and if our police and military refuse I WILL STAND ALONE. OUT OF MY COLD DEAD HANDS."
That's just one story on one site! It's an impossible task trying to monitor all the potential threats.