President Obama’s brand new Twitter feed is more than just a way Obama can talk to people, it’s also a new stream of messages that the Secret Service will have to monitor for possible threats against the president.
Obama launched his @POTUS Twitter account this week, and set a record for getting to 1 million followers faster than anyone ever. As of late this week, he had 2.3 million followers.
He’s only tweeted four times, but already, some have left nasty responses to his tweets, and some seem to approach the level of threats.
DailyDot found some of the threatening tweets, including one that said, “you can count, on me waiting for you in the parking lot.”
Another said, “Go to hill black man, I ill kill u.”
White House spokesman Josh Earnest on Thursday referred reporters to the U.S. Secret Service for information on how they handle possible threats expressed over Twitter. A spokesman for that agency indicated that Twitter is something that is being closely monitored.
“The Secret Service receives intelligence information from a wide variety of sources; general public, local law enforcement, federal agencies, intelligence agencies,” said spokesman Brian Leary. “This also includes information received from Twitter.”
“Any time we receive information we have to make an assessment on things like veracity and/or urgency while also considering context and dangerousness,” he added. “Once the assessment is made the appropriate follow up has to be determined.”
While some urgent threats made over Twitter may be investigated, Earnest seemed to acknowledge that simple crude language used by people to response to Obama might just have to be accepted as a fact of life when it comes to using social media.
“Unfortunately … those kinds of images and that kind of language is all too common on the Internet,” he said. “These are the kinds of messages and imagery that was directed at the White House Twitter feed, and certainly have been directed at the Twitter feed of other White House officials here.”
When asked if there was any way to stop people from tweeting crude comments at Obama, Earnest said the only steps that could be taken might be too extreme.
“My guess is that if we spend a lot of time trying to block those kinds of messages, we’d probably spend a lot of time blocking people on the Internet,” he said.
