Man arrested for tweeting bomb threat aimed at Donald Trump
A man from Waterbury, Connecticut, was arrested Saturday (23rd April) after tweeting a bomb threat aimed at a Donald Trump rally.
Sean Taylor Morkys tweeted the following via his Twitter account –
Is someone going to bomb the Trump rally or am I going to have to?
It comes only weeks after a man had the Secret Service show up at his door after he made a bomb joke on Facebook aimed at a Sanders/Clinton rally in Ohio.
In this case, it was the police who showed up at Morkys’ door after tracking down his Twitter profile. Morkys’ was arrested and charged with 1st degree threatening for “inciting injury to person or property” and 2nd degree breach of peace.
Like with many of these types of cases, it was soon clear that Morkys’ wasn’t a serious threat, nor had he intended the threat to have been taken seriously. But the inherent problem with social media is that context is usually lost. A joke about placing a bomb at a public event will read very similar to someone seriously intending to do just that and posting about it. Authorities don’t have the ability to tell if someone is messing around or has serious intentions.
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Just because you’re typing at your desk from behind a keyboard while staring at your computer screen, we can find ourselves falling into the misbelief that the online world just isn’t real, because it isn’t tangible. But you’d be wrong. The consequences of your keyboard tapping can be just as real, just as tangible, and just as serious as anything you do in the offline world. And it is this 21st century reality that some people are just not realising quickly enough.
It’s another reminder that posting bomb threats – even ones you have no intention of following through or even ones not meant to have been taken seriously – is really not okay! While most criminals and terrorists out there don’t give the authorities the luxury of forward notice via social media, authorities still have to take such online threats very seriously.
So stop messing about. It wastes police time. And it will likely land you with a criminal record.
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