The United States Secret Service has apologized to Fox after an agent trashed-talked the network on the official Secret Service Twitter account.
You know those unsmiling guys in dark suits who jog alongside the President’s car and talk into their collars? That’s the Secret Service. The agency actually does a lot more than just take bullets for the President; there’s a uniformed division that provides security and protection duties at the White House, the Department of the Treasury and other locations, and it also investigates currency counterfeiting cases. Watch In the Line of Fire to learn more.
Anyway, during one of these investigations an agent apparently got bored and decided to share a bit of his job frustrations with the rest of the world. “Had to monitor Fox for a story,” he wrote on Twitter. “Can’t. Deal. With. The. Blathering.” A fair and balanced assessment of Fox, you might say, but there was nonetheless a wee little bit of a problem with it. Instead of spreading the word on his own personal account, he put it out on the official Secret Service feed.
This did not go over well, as you might imagine. The tweet was eventually deleted but not before it was “widely retweeted,” screen caps made and much fun poked. And of course, the Secret Service had to eat it afterward. “An employee with access to the Secret Service’s Twitter Account, who mistakenly believed they were on their personal account, posted an unapproved and inappropriate tweet,” Secret Service spokesman Edwin Donovan said in a statement. “The tweet did not reflect the views of the U.S. Secret Service and it was immediately removed. We apologize for this mistake, and the user no longer has access to our official account.”
Amusing though this is – and I am very much amused – it’s hardly the first or even the worst accidental tweet to slip out. The incredible ease with which anyone can communicate instantly with the entire world makes the occasional spot of ill-advised commentary inevitable. In February, Kevin Butler accidentally retweeted the PlayStation 3 jailbreak code to his followers, an awkward moment but presumably not nearly as embarrassing as that of the Dutch politician who in March tweeted rather than DM’ed a message about his lover’s “throbbing climax.” More recently, Alistair McNally, the senior director of creative development at BioWare, unofficially outed Dragon Age 3 with a tweet seeking environment artists to work on the game.
So remember, people: a little attentiveness goes a long way. Let’s be careful out there!
Source: Mashable
