Imagine you are hard at work, having a productive day when your cell phone rings for the 6th time in 2 minutes. It is your 14 year old daughter and it is not out of the ordinary for her to call you at work, except she's hysterical. Between sobs and gasps, she explains that you need to come home because the Secret Service has come to your house and that they want to speak with you.
At first you lean towards thinking the entire call is a crazy prank, you glance at the caller ID and sure enough, it is your daughter. But she is totally incoherent, and she is saying something about Facebook, when a much old female voice interrupts and identifies herself as indeed an employee of the Federal Government more specifically the Secret Service.
Over the next hour you learn that, two months earlier your daughter posted on her Facebook page her recounting of a dream/nightmare she had while visiting a friend. In her innocence she triggered an alert that was eventually linked to her and that her post had just a few "key" words and enough detail to cause a "field team" to visit your daughter.
She is not the first to be targeted by the US Secret Service for threats or perceived threats against the President of the United States.
What is interesting is the delay from the time the "dream" was detailed on Facebook and the time the Secret Service managed to knock on the door and determine that the not even old enough to drive teenager wasn't a threat.
The US Secret Service spends a considerable amount of time investigating threats. While the true number is not public information the general consensus is that the President receives about 3,000 threats a year. It isn't clear if the growth of Facebook and Twitter has increased the number or just made it easier.
CP's take: There are some things you just don't do, yell fire in a movie theather, use the word bomb on an airplane and make threats against the president.
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