Teen Questioned By Secret Service After Threat on MySpace Page

A fourteen-year-old 8th grader was taken out of class and questioned by Secret Service agents about a picture of President Bush with the words “Kill Bush” scrawled over his face that she had posted on her MySpace page in protest of the Iraq war. After having learned in a class at school such postings were illegal, the girl had taken the page down, which also featured a dagger stabbing the president’s outstretched hand, but not before agents had noted it. The girl and her parents acknowledged the right of the agents to question her, but protested that her parents should have been there for the 15 minutes the agents spent with her, reducing her to tears. Make sure you emphasize with your students what constitutes a threat or defamation of character in an online posting and how EVERYTHING online is public!