Secret Service investigates Obama Facebook poll

The dark side of social networking just surfaced. A poll was posted on Facebook Saturday asking people to vote on whether President Obama should be assassinated.

The Secret Service is not taking this as a joke. Spokesman Ed Donovan said the agency is investigating the issue and looking for the person who posted the poll, which was taken down Monday morning after the Secret Service alerted Facebook about its presence.

The poll asked "Should Obama be killed?" and gave users answer choices of "yes", "maybe", "if he cuts my healthcare", and "no". Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt, was quick to point out that this was not a poll that originated from the social networking site itself.

"The third-party application that enabled an individual user to create the offensive poll was brought to our attention this morning," wrote Schnitt in an e-mail to Computerworld. "The application was immediately suspended while the inappropriate content could be removed by the developer and until such time as the developer institutes better procedures to monitor their user-generated content."

For more on this investigation:
- check out this Computerworld article