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Secret Service Interrogates 13-Year-old for Warning President Obama About Suicide Bombers

Matt Welch | 5.19.2011 10:08 AM


Has Facebook become make-work for the Secret Service? Outrages like this point to "yes":

When Timi Robertson found out her middle-schooler son was being questioned by the Secret Service and the police at his Tacoma, Wa. school, she says she "just about lost it," — especially after they told her it was over a Facebook post the boy had written warning President Barack Obama of suicide attacks in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death.

"My 13-year-old son, who's a minor, who's supposed to be safe and secure in his classroom at school, is being interrogated without my knowledge or consent by the Secret Service," Robertson told Q13 Fox News reporter Dana Rebik. She only got wind of the interrogation because a school security guard tipped her off and arrived a half-hour after the agent had already begun questioning her son. Tacoma police were also present. […]

Her son […] told the reporter he was "very scared" and that he's more careful about what he writes on the site.

Mission accomplished!

Matt Welch is an editor at large at Reason.

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