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Cybersecurity CEO Gets Fired After Threatening To Kill Trump On Facebook (mashable.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Mashable: A San Diego CEO was fired after saying on Facebook that he would get a "sniper rifle" and "kill the president-elect." Matt Harrigan, CEO of the cybersecurity firm PacketSled, posted the comments on his personal Facebook page, but they ended up on Reddit where Trump supporters found the comments and mobilized to contact law enforcement. "I'm going to kill the president. Elect," Harrigan wrote. "Bring it Secret Service." PacketSled said in a statement that it had accepted Harrigan's resignation. "The PacketSled Board of Directors accepted the resignation of President and CEO Matthew Harrigan, effective immediately," the company said. "We want to be very clear, PacketSled does not condone the comments made by Mr. Harrigan, which do not reflect the views or opinions of the company, its employees, investors or partners." In a previous statement, the company said it reported the information to the Secret Service and placed Harrigan on administrative leave. According to The Next Web, Harrigan apologized for his remarks and said the threats were meant to be a joke: "My recent Facebook comment was intended to be a joke, in the context of a larger conversation, and only privately shared as such. Anyone who knows me, knows that I do not engage in this form of rhetoric with any level of seriousness and the comment most certainly does not represent my real personal views in any regard. I apologize if anything that I said was either taken seriously, was offensive, or caused any legitimate concern."
Just not very smart of him, whatever your politics. I'm sure he realizes that now, but he seems a little mature to be learning a lesson like: do not threaten head of state with murder in a public forum.
...and the exact same thing can be said for "the right." Society has unfortunately become a set of echo chambers, with roughly half the population in each one.
No but I remember that angry anti-government white dude who blew up the federal building in Oklahoma.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Ridiculous! He had no business being CEO with that kind of mentality.
Mr. Harrigan, next time you should think better of what you are about to say. What you said was not funny.
You could have simply said "There's nothing we can do about the travesty of this election. Except maybe the Second Amendment People can do something, I don't know."
See, that way it's funny, isn't it? That way it's just a joke. Everybody would have LOLed.
Now that he's unemployed, he'll be eligible for free Obamacare! .
Free Obamacare? The unemployed get free health insurance? Since when?
Only in America..
Oh boy. You people really don't know much about the outside world, do you?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
As a CEO of a cybersecurity firm the first thing you should know is that no comment in facebook is private, regardless of the content. He was correctly fired just on grounds of incompetence, no matter his political stance. NB: I disagree with killing anyone, no matter what.
Regardless of your political stance or your opinion of Trump, publicly threatening the life of a federal politician is about the dumbest shit you could do.
Sad how these unthinking people will put themselves on lists for the rest of their lives because they couldn't use the slightest bit of moderation.
When jokes are outlawed, only outlaws will have jokes.
I'm taking him at his word that it was a joke, and I can easily imagine many contexts where such a joke could be made. None of them are public.
Actually, this isn't an example of the Email Inquisition, since the joke reportedly started on Facebook (though many people communicate more via Facebook than via email). Really hard to imagine how the CEO of a cybersecurity company could regard ANYTHING on Facebook as secure or private. Already quite sufficient reason for him to be fired, eh? He didn't even know how to control his own so-called privacy settings?
I have a theory about humor. I think we need it to be human. It's intimately linked to our nature as learning machines, quite possibly our deepest and most instinctive motivation for learning new things. Think of how easily babies are amused. Think of how funny your greatest teachers were, though of course they used humor selectively. You can even think of slapstick, where the humor is in the pain of someone else, and whereby you learn not to do that.
I call it the General Theory of Relatively Funny Stuff.
In closing, let me remind you not to attempt any jokes in an airport. A friend of mine once did that and it cost him a lot of money and several days of his time. The joke also contributed to some of your personal inconveniences if you ever travel with an electronic device, but 'nuff said.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Choosing not to reveal my political affiliation here, my neutral statement on the state of political discourse in this country is that it has for too long deteriorated into something that is sad, deplorable, innately violent, and frankly shameful. There is no leading political voice in either party who after uttering anything no matter how high-minded wouldn't be skewered for his or her position. The hate on both sides is rabid and irrational, and big thoughts have been replaced by cheap taglines on Facebook meant only to score cheap political points rather than argue for policies and positions that will lift all of us up. The culmination of this behavior has led to a death-spiral that has fake(?) death threats serving as a proxy for joking, or maybe not joking. America has become a nation participating in the Jerry Springer show. We need another enlightenment, and I seriously doubt there's one waiting for us on the horizon or anybody left who is willing to join in it.
that was well established during the election. You're not really getting Trump except as a figure head.
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on one of the major news networks today. And it wasn't Fox or MSNBC. So yeah, things are getting pretty crazy. The media just keeps right on pouring gasoline on the fire so long as it sells news.
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And I remember him being executed, with full agreement by right-wing white dudes.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Actually, it's rather ironic. You see, we're often told about the Paradox of Tolerance formulated by Karl Popper, essentially that intolerance is the one thing one cannot tolerate. However, how does one decide what "intolerance" is and by what right is it suppressed? Well, just look at what Popper wrote:
From this we can see that the moral justification is based on dealing with those who "answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols." So it's ultimately justified by means of the right of self-defense and anyone using Popper to justify going on the attack has it completely backwards. It's a shield, not a sword.
Instead, it should properly be used against the intolerance and criminal behavior of those particular individual people who promote or are involved in things like large riots or attacking and nearly killing an old man in the street (as well as stealing his car) after a fender-bender when they believed he supported the other political party.
Ok I think Trump is a moron who will probably fuck the country over, but I support the democratic process therefore support him as the elected leader.
One thing I am already sick of is the amount of anti-Trump articles doing the rounds based purely on speculation of what he might do as POTUS.
This sort of thing is bearable during an election when everyone is trying to convince others to vote for their person, but its over, he won, let it go.
He should be given the chance to lead and be judged on his actual decisions, not what we think he might do. All this Anti-Trump hysteria is doing is proving Trump right and feeding the monster.
Actually I think you would find that you would find him very charming and interesting in person. Just like Obama and other people who have risen to high office. It is hard to get anywhere in politics if you do not have this ability.
I used to work for the guy, and I agree 100% with your statement.
A schizophrenic takes a shot at a politician and you're blaming politics? You don't know much about mental illness.
Jared Lee Loughner (the shooter) may have been mentally ill, but after the 2011 Tucson shooting there was much discussion about how the toxic political environment in the USA may have set him off. John Stewart of The Daily Show said it well:
For all the hyperbole and vitriol that's become a part of our political process—when the reality of that rhetoric, when actions match the disturbing nature of words, we haven't lost our capacity to be horrified. ... Maybe it helps us to remember to match our rhetoric with reality more often.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
A schizophrenic takes a shot at a politician and you're blaming politics? You don't know much about mental illness.
A citizen takes a shot at a politician and you're blaming mental illness? You don't know much about politics.
I agree except for the 'deteriorated' part. Honestly we are not far removed from Jacksonian politics. Burr and Hamilton hated each other so much they fought a duel before that. After Jackson we moved to race baiting, and then to muckraker journalism. We took a little timeout to fight WWII and had a little second era of good feelings post war where things were somewhat more civil for 16ish years. We next promptly returned to race baiting, from their we segwayed into fear and nationalism. Which brings us to today. Where economic fears are pretty much the order of the day and the opposition party is trying to 'trump' the fear by resorting to race baiting and identity politic.
Frankly I don't think much of anything has changed at all, other than in relatively superficial ways.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
From Wlkipedia: A former classmate, Caitie Parker, who attended high school and college with Loughner, described his political views prior to 2007, prior to his personality transformation, as "left wing, quite liberal,"[42] "radical."
Look, don't you know that 99% of ALL mass shootings in the US have been by leftists? It's always so interesting how ALL leftists are so ignorant of all facts that prove their worldview is completely wrong.
Trump is not, and you're going to be surprised by the things he does because of that. He's not part of the shitty milieu that you're used to. You probably won't like what is happening, but expecting it to be the same as Obama or Bush is ill-informed. But everyone will have plenty of time to learn.
Trump is the most interesting candidate to win since Teddy Roosevelt got catapulted into office after McKinley's death. Instead of bemoaning it, people should be just popping popcorn. My expectation is that once he is out of office, you won't recognize America. Street protests and death threats won't stop that from happening. Also, you don't want him to die, even if you are a Democrat. You'll end up with an old line Republican replacing him with Bush policies - which no Democrat should want, and I don't even want. You'll find out over time that he's really a circa 1985 Democrat from New York with capitalist convictions. Moreover, the changes he performs may well benefit Democrats too once they return to power.
The fever dreams of assassinations, impeachments and faithless electors need to be put away. As do the stupid election rhetoric which didn't work. Unless you like being branded as a conspiracy theorist, in which case...have at it. Republicans had been dismissing and defeating Democrats for many years prior to Obama because of that very factor. You might be too young to remember Carter, Dukakis or Mondale or their supporters. If they had seemed like reasonable people (and their supporters, too), you would have had no Reagan or no Bush Sr., perhaps. It wasn't so much that America was more right wing then - in fact, I suspect it was less so than today. But the Democrats managed to convince America that they were less reliable hands in control of the Presidency, at least.
I don't really think anyone is going to listen, but I might be back in late 2020 to point out the obvious to you.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
It's doubtful that Trump has any power to affect the standards for libel. You can read a full explanation of why here:
https://popehat.com/2016/11/14...
The phrase that bothers me is that the company demanded his resignation.
Instead, he should have been "terminated for cause".
In the latter case, severance is typically not paid.
In the former case, they typically get a severance package.
This guy doesn't deserve a severance package.
I don't think your analysis is adequate. Your first example is incitement and your second example could be snipped, thus "proving" you made the direct threat.
No. Incitement is "won't someone please put Trump into a wood chipper? for me? I mean it." and not "I would be happy if someone put Trump into a wood chipper". But yes, "I am going to put Trump into a wood chipper" would be an actual actionable threat, if you took it seriously. If someone has both the motive and the means, you can go ahead and do that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If you want to know how we ended up like this, please watch this video: "President Trump: How & Why...". It is a must-view for people exactly like you for how the level of political discourse got so low. It's by a leftist, so you know he's telling the truth and has been fact-checked. It's really sad what he's saying and it is all 100% true.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Yeah, the guy who worked on her campaign once.
Not exactly a poster boy for right wing violence, what with him being a Democrat and all.
No. If Trump dies before the electoral college vote, it's up to the electoral college. If Trump dies after the electoral college vote, Vice-President Elect Pence becomes President-Elect Pence. In no case is Obama eligible for a third term; that's barred by the 22nd Amendment.
This is so true! The split this time was more vertical than horizontal i.e. not so much Left vs Right, as much as Top vs Bottom. So Hilary and Ted Cruz found themselves on the same side - establishment, Wall Street, trade deals,... while Trump and Sanders did on the other end. The only differences b/w Trump and Sanders were things like Minimum wage, BLM, Abortion, Muslims, Comprehensive Immigration Reforms vs the Wall. But even Bernie was against any more immigration - legal or illegal - as long as there is such a high unemployment rate in the country
One of the things that that I believe hinders civil discourse is the insistence by some on the left that everything Republicans do is motivated by racism, sexism, and bigotry. It honestly gets a bit hard to remain civil against the constant barrage of people leveling those types of horrible charges against you at every turn, but lashing out in turn does no good either. Granted, the right is pretty good at name-calling too (especially Trump, of course), but let's talk about what you just said.
Why do you feel that criticism of Obama is solely because of his race? Are you perhaps somewhat young? Because EVERY president is criticized by political opponents, regardless of their skin color. If anything, I think Republicans were a bit afraid of taking off the gloves, at least early on, precisely for fear of being labeled as such. Bush Jr was described as a war criminal, and Reagan was reviled by the left, who took every opportunity to mock and denigrate him. But with Obama, it's racism?
Let me ask you: does opposing the abuse of the H1B program automatically mean one is prejudiced again Indians? It's a ridiculous notion, right? But why is someone who opposes illegal immigration automatically a racist, simply because most of those illegal immigrants are Hispanic?
Sure, there are Republicans who are undoubtedly racist, homophobic, or bigoted, but I resent it when we all get painted with that very ugly brush. Most of the Republicans I know personally are very nice people, just like most of the Democrats I know are very nice people. Not bigoted. Not racist. Not sexist. But too many of them are all too willing to think the worst of their political opponents.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Harrigan apologized for his remarks and said the threats were meant to be a joke: ...
The Secret Service doesn't really have a sense of humor about things like that. (rightly so)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Somehow, I'm not surprised that an unstable liberal would get their knowledge of guns from video games like Call of Duty.
Since he's never purchased or used one, then the chances of him hitting anything at range is basically zero.
I always shake my head when an executive, celebrity, athlete, etc. says s/he is apologizing "if" they offended anyone. CLEARLY THEY *** DID *** OFFEND PEOPLE or else they wouldn't be apologizing. :) They're sorry they got caught, not sorry for their actions/words. They need to OWN what they did and say, "I apologize FOR offending people."
As opposed to Occupy Wall Street that squatted in the middle of Manhattan and did go to war with law enforcement?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
The Court situation will quickly change, and without a majority in at least one house or the prez, you don't have enough influence to stop most highly partisan bills.
And one of the smartest and most experienced there is.
Can you guys please stop saying that phrase like it is based on reality? One term as Secretary of State, following one Senate term, while being married to the only President in living memory to be impeached, does not make Hillary "the most experienced" politician. Any state governor worth considering, Democrat or Republican, has more experience where it matters, working with a legislature and getting policies in place that make the people in the state better off.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Oh it definitely would have been gone. All she would have have to do is get an amendment with 2/3 approval through two houses of Congress that are Republican controlled, then get 38 states to ratify it, even though 32 of the states have Republican legislatures.
Do you notice who isn't involved in that process? The President. Your precious 2nd Amendment wasn't going anywhere.
political discourse in this country is that it has for too long deteriorated into something that is sad, deplorable
How ironic that it's actually some of the Clinton supporters who are being deplorable.
== Jez ==
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The idea that Clinton and Co. would use the agreed-upon process outlined in the Constitution to affect change is naive at best and laughable at worst. Over the last 8 years, the Democratic party (and their media collaborators) have shown the world that the "ends justify the means" and they have no time for building consensus. It's their way or the highway. And with gun-control, doubly-so.
Many of us have no doubt that Clinton and Co would use every part of government to enforce her brand of gun control.