Leigh Van Bryan, 26, was handcuffed and kept under armed guard in a cell with Mexican drug dealers for 12 hours after landing in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting.And let me guess. She then went on Twitter and gushed, "Best! Weekend! EVAR!" Or however an English chick would say it.
Question, though: How many "Tweets" are there on an average day? Millions? So did DHS have some reason to monitor this particular moron specially, or are there really keyword monitors set to catch "destroy America?" Would somebody really say that, if they meant it?
I'm just asking. Because if I were going to destroy America* next Thursday, I think I'd call it "step out for a pack of cigarettes" or something when I Tweeted about it. Just to throw the feds off the trail, y'know?
Dear god. I just used "tweeted" in a sentence.
Beam me the hell up, Scotty. Please. I'm begging you.
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*Private to DHS: I'm not going to do that. It's a week from Tuesday.
2 comments:
'Destroy' is British slang for 'party', so the guy was just saying he was going to go have some fun. But he was put into a cage for it.
There is an interesting comment thread at Bruce Schneier's blog about the path that DHS must have taken to go from tweet to arresting them at the border. And yes, there is indeed a program of monitoring social media by the US Federal government.
By the way, I used to poke fun at Twitter, until I started using it. Turns out that the least technically sophisticated social networking platform has the most number of my engineering and high-tech career friends on it. You do have a choice in who to follow, you know.
Scotty: Ach no, I canna dooo it! I've got Angry Birds stuck in the warp drive & besides... You used 'tweeted' in a sentence & I'll not be lettin' you contaminate the whole bloody ship!
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