Political Discussions
Secret Service Investigating Obama "Death" Poll on Facebook
Posted by CentricStudios • 9/30/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: facebook, obama, poll, secret service, threat
Is asking a question the equivalent to making a death threat?
User Comments
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In general No,
There are ways that a question could be concieved as a threat. But unless you post a link to, or a quote of the actual question, that's impossible to say. -
looked it up
apparently someone on facebook created a survey about whether or not Obama should be killed. Even if this wasn't about the president, I think the person creating the survey would be at risk of investigation. In the 30 seconds of research I did on it, I didn't see any discussion about potential charges.
www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/28/facebook.poll/index.html -
The Facebook poll framed the question “Should Obama be killed?” The choices were “yes,” “maybe,” “if he cuts my healthcare,” and “no.” More than 730 people responded to the poll before it was taken down; the responses are unavailable.
I agree it may not be the smartest question to ask in a public forum, but to me it is just a question.
I hadn't seen any potential charges yet either so that is why I was curious to see what others thought about it. -
It's a question, there has to be a statement of intent to make it a threat.
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One thing is for certain it is brown trouser time for someone. They could probably track down who had responded "yes" to the poll as well. Potentially they are in more trouble than the person who posted the poll.
Maybe this is the future of intelligence gathering. Put up a poll on popular social web sites and use that to find potential assassins, terrorists and the like.-
Wanting someone dead isn't enough either.
I wish someone would Kill Achmadinejad is not the same as "I'm going to kill achmadinejad"..
Wishing that someone else would do it isn't enough. -
wp
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It may be enough under anti-terror legislation (Homeland Security Act) though otherwise why would the Secret Service get so publicly involved?
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Honestly, I suspect whoever did it probably did it as a joke - and you must admit it is kind of funny! I mean, just the fact that somebody would even ASK that is funny! I don't actually believe Obama should be killed, even if my healthcare is cut, but I still would answer "yes" just for the fun of it. I don't think it's a death threat at all; I think it's a low-class flyby joke by some young prankster.-
I don't know...
I thought of it from the other side.
Person x hears people saying it..
x thinks that this can't be a common occurrence
x hears it again, and again...
x. decides to post a poll to see how many nuts are out there really.
X posts poll "Do you think Obama should be killed"
All hell breaks loose. -
Really? I guess it's possible.
Well, if worse comes to worse, the Secret Service can handle this one juuusttt fine. -
I don't think that the person posting this question on Facebook is the one they are worried about to begin with.
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Understood. Wow, that made me really somber.
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I see nothing wrong with investigating. That's just covering their bases-
Not doing so would be negligent. -
yeah, this is the Secret Service, not the SEC
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It is probably something worth bearing in mind when contributing to this discussion board. It is not just the members who read it.
Polybore had their google group marked as spam after someone lodged a specific image violation (within hours) after polybore put up an image of a certain Mr Beck. Which was a bit vindictive considering polybore had gone to the trouble of finding an image with an open licences (although did not attribute it but heck it is the one on his wikipedia page).
Presumably it was not a member of the board that reported it to google as it would have been a lot easier to simply report the comment.
It is all sorted now but it was a pain. Although not as much of a pain as having the secret service on your back would be.-
well, since Faux News Network edits the wikipedia articles on all of its "personalities" it probably belongs to them:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_Channel_controversies#Wikipedia_edits
74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:e3JnV6g-tkAJ:www.informationweek.com/news/int... -
yep and a flunky armed with google alert
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A wonder if they threw the guy who leaked the Vapo-rub video off a skyscraper like some iPhone smuggler
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They probably threw him into a vast vat of vapo rub.
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"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIGH! IT BURNS!
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