I'm surprised this hasn't been posted yet but if so then my bad. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/tech...ter-hacked-announces-obama-killed-iowa/39553/
Also, yes it may have been the work of hackers but what's inexcusable is the fact that Fox left the tweets up on their twitter site for NINE (9) FREAKING HOURS!!!! Nine hours after the first post did they take them down. That's inexcusable. There's a delete button on twitter. It won't erase what's been done but there's no excuse for leaving the false tweets on the site.
Before you tar and feather Fox for this know that they may have had no control over their account for the nine hours those tweets were up. Due to the hackers using President Obama as the subject and what they relayed about him in those fake tweets instantaneously put this at the door step of the US Secret Service who is now heading the investigation into this particular case of hacking. The delay in the deletion of those tweets may have been nothing more than the Secret Service completing their initial protocols into their investigation before giving the ok for the tweets to be deleted.
I'm not on twitter so I don't know how it works entirely, but they were at least able to tweet that that their account had been hacked. So I don't know, is it possible to be able to tweet without having the ability to delete previous tweets?
I am not on twitter either so I have no idea how it works as well. All that I can tell you is that as soon as the Secret Service or any investigative entity enters the picture their first priority is to maintain the crime scene for as long as possible until it is deemed no longer needed to do so. That is just a basic 101 of investigation. Now given the crime scene is a virtual one and given the hiccups electronics and their software often encounter it really wouldn't be prudent to make a hasty deletion just in case something does go wrong and something is lost regardless of the backups put up in place to prevent it. More times than not the basic MO is to take the website offline and basically dissect it after it has been backed up thoroughly. That said and after doing a few google searches on this a case can made against Twitter from the point ferrari77 was making in his/her second post as Twitter can apparently suspend an account and put up a placeholder for that page without any apparent data loss when something like this happens. I don't know if that happened or not but ultimately that decision would have been Twitter's and not Fox's. Right now one can't really fault Fox for their actions especially in light of all the Anthony Weiner crap from about a month ago. My advice would have been probably the same that was given to them. Leave the tweets alone, be transparent as possible and fully cooperate with the Secret Service and their investigation.
