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NEWS > U.S.A. > SECRET SERVICE UPSET OVER FACEBOOK POLL, STATUS UPDATES
SECRET SERVICE UPSET OVER FACEBOOK POLL, STATUS UPDATES
September 30 2009
Washington, D.C. – The phenomenon that has been Facebook continues to take the world by storm. As the company continues to grow and the user-base of the website increases the upwards potential seems almost limitless, something that will guarantee
success for many years to come. The life of Facebook hasn’t been without controversy though and with increased exposure, those types of issues will continue to appear and cause huge amounts of coverage, something the company is just learning to manage.
Now one organization that has stepped into the fold to investigate and criticize the company is none other than the Secret Service and by extension the President himself. Ostensibly, Secret Service is investigating a poll created on the site asking whether or not President Obama should be assassinated. Facebook officials quickly removed the poll but the investigation appears to have opened up the proverbial can of worms. Now Secret Service officials are investigating the site on a much larger scale and have begun investigating all criticisms of the President, specifically status updates which are often sent out to all of a particular users friend’s, an occurrence particularly worrisome to the agency.
“Facebook is complying with all requests from the Secret Service just as long as they do not infringe on the privacy and rights of our users. Certain issues, specifically those in the public realm, will be dealt with appropriately. We can assure all of our users that while the government is interested in status updates we will not provide them with such access if a user’s profile is turned to private,” said the company in a statement. “Any profiles that are kept in the public realm will be accessible by the government. We also suggest that for safeties sake if you friend someone you do not know personally you should limit access to your profile.”
The secret service has reportedly been investigating a number of incidents including David Kent of St. Louis who declared “David Louis thinks Obama is doing it better than Hitler” and Sarah Wilkes of Miami who stated “Sarah Wilkes won’t let Adolf Obama steal her future”.
“Officially we do not comment on investigations ever but word around the office is that they are very serious about this. They realize how powerful Facebook has become and 
they want to make sure that the users and the company are in line with what the President and the Secret Service need in order to maintain security. From what I’ve heard they have been keeping false profiles for quite awhile and been watching people that way. This poll was just the in to open the investigation wider,” said an insider who preferred to remain nameless. “The major issue is that these updates can go out to hundreds or even thousands of friends and that could potentially sway them in a direction that isn’t in line with what the government wants. There are many people to whom Facebook is very important and its influence on their lives is absolute.”
President Obama made good use of social networking during his Presidential campaign but as yet still does not have his own Facebook account with which to fight illicit status updates.
“The problem with the internet is that anyone can say pretty much anything they want and that makes it very difficult to get out the President’s message. Words have a way of spreading virally across the web and that means something small in one area could end up being huge on the other end. In intelligence circles that is called blowback,” said Scrape TV Technology analyst Ken Kevins. “Though many of these updates may amount to nothing the onus is on the Secret Service to investigate all threats in order to prevent another 9/11.”
MySpace is reportedly conducting a poll similar to the one posted on Facebook but Secret Service officials have declined to investigate.
Mike Michaels, American Correspondent
NEWS > U.S.A. > SECRET SERVICE UPSET OVER FACEBOOK POLL, STATUS UPDATES
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