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Editor says, what if Barack Obama's Facebook Account was hacked? Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the July 2011 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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In 2011, on this day hackers began broadcasting rogue messages from President Obama's Facebook Account just weeks after the incoming Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warned the Senate Armed Services Committee that the U.S. could face cyberwarfare.
Facebook LeaksInitially the revelations were relatively low key, exploiting alleged security weaknesses in Facebook to indiscretely reveal false information in the President's profile such as his birth in Kenya, the fact that his publications were entirely ghost written, that his smoking intake had increased to over a packet a day, that over the last decade he had spent on average less than two weekends at home etc.
The next Pearl Harbor we confront could very well be a cyber attack that cripples our power systems, our grid, our security systems, our financial systems, our governmental systemsEmbarrassingly the US Government was unable to prevent these discloures reaching the twenty-two million friends of President Obama even after Panetta (pictured) was ordered to take personal charge resulting in the immediate decision to shut down the Facebook page.
Although damaging this personal attack soon developed into something far more insidious. Further revelations soon began to emerge about the disappearance of nuclear warheads in Pakistan and Russia. And shocking details of America's clandestine role in the "Arab Spring".
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Alternate Historian, 2004-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Politicians Source: Huffington Post Labels: Barack Obama, Leon Panetta, Facebook, Cyberwarfare, Internet Security.
~ Could happen any time. Spooky,
~ This would be funny, if nothing else.
~ We can always dream :)
~ So are these leaks" supposed to be of genuine information or disinformation?
If the former, the revelation that Obama was really born in Kenya would provoke a constitutional crisis, since it's far from clear who would be constitutionally entitled to take his place. And no, the presidency wouldn't default to John McCain; it could just as easily go to Joe Biden A case could be made for a full-scale "redo," since in that case Obama wouldn't have been legally eligible for the Democratic nomination, and there are plenty of Democrats, let alone Republicans, who'd rather the White House stand vacant than that Hillary Clinton get another shot at it. which raises the interesting question - what if the presidency had a recall mechanism?
~ It does, in a way--impeachment. But "recall" as you seem to mean it would be something like what happened a few years ago with California's Gov. Gray Davis, which ended up putting Arnold Schwarzenegger in the goverenor's mansion. essentially there'd be a whole new election.
I'd guess one reason no such mechanism exists is that in the 1780s it would have been impractyical, given the primitive state of transportation and communications (in 1789, George Washington was sworn in seven weeks late because, due to bad winter weather, the roads between Virginia and New York City were impassable all through March and early April). I also suspect the Framers, who designed the presidency with Washington in mind, did not want to weaken the office by making it too easy for a president to be thrown out.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
