13-Year-Old Interrogated By Secret Service Over Facebook Posting

First of all, we’re talking about a 13-year-old on Facebook. That’s really all I have to say about that.

Second, I can’t really take issue with the Secret Service for coming down on this possible baby terrorist but would like to know a few things before I go judging anyone. Was his Facebook page private? If not, what’s wrong with his parents to allow that? While his mom is busy getting outraged, she could be reading up on basic Internet privacy for children. If it was private, then we have a real issue because it means the Secret Service is somehow getting a copy of what is posted on Facebook. As if that’s hard and/or a shock to anyone.

Seattle’s Q13 Fox News:

After Osama bin Laden was killed, 13-year-old Vito LaPinta posted an update to his Facebook status that got the Feds attention.

“I was saying how Osama was dead and for Obama to be careful because there could be suicide bombers,” says LaPinta.

A week later, while Vito was in his fourth period class, he was called in to the principal’s office.

“A man walked in with a suit and glasses and he said he was part of the Secret Service,” LaPinta said. “He told me it was because of a post I made that indicated I was a threat toward the President.”

The Tacoma school district acknowledged a Secret Service agent questioned Vito and that it was a security guard who called Vito’s mom because the principal was on another call. The school district said they didn’t wait for Vito’s mother to get there because they thought she didn’t take the phone call seriously.

“That’s a blatant lie,” [the child's mother Timi] Robertson said.

Little Vito’s Facebook page is, apparently, private to some extent. It still reveals his 7 friends and answers to several questions, like this winner:

So ignoring the fact that a 13-year-old is using social media to cuss like a sailor (JDA doesn’t judge; at 9, she got in trouble for telling a 4th grade classmate she was a “fuckhead” – shock, I know), if his Facebook wall was hidden before he made headlines on conservative websites across the country, how the hell did the Secret Service know what he’d posted?

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