{"id":180096,"date":"2022-09-13T16:19:07","date_gmt":"2022-09-13T23:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eugeneweekly.com\/?p=187616"},"modified":"2022-09-13T16:19:07","modified_gmt":"2022-09-13T23:19:07","slug":"twitter-surveillance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/2022\/09\/13\/twitter-surveillance\/","title":{"rendered":"Twitter Surveillance"},"content":{"rendered":"

When he began listening to a voicemail and realized it was from an officer of the Portland Police Bureau, the Oregon Democratic Party field organizer and prolific tweeter\u2019s first thought was that he’d been caught illegally streaming movies from his laptop.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Miles Larson didn\u2019t expect to be accused of threatening Nancy Pelosi, the current speaker of the United States House of Representatives who visited Portland Sept. 6 to fundraise for congressional candidates.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The reason the police called Larson, who posts under the account @MalcolmFLeX or \u201cBiracial Angel\u201d on Twitter, was over a tweet he\u2019d sent 42 minutes before receiving the voicemail, that read:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNancy Pelosi in Portland rn time to shoot my shot.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is stupid now but when I got the voicemail,\u201d which he says came from a private number, \u201cI fully thought it was because I pirated Jordan Peele\u2019s <\/span>Nope<\/span><\/i> last week,\u201d Larson said in an interview with <\/span>Eugene Weekly<\/span><\/i>. \u201cI recently got an email from Comcast telling me to fuck off and I fully expected it to be about that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What Larson thought was a relatively innocent tweet espousing his plans to ask the visiting dignitary on a date, turned out to be troubling enough to warrant a phone call from the PPB, becoming a reminder of how law enforcement uses social media and how easily it can grab their attention \u2014 even if you think you\u2019re anonymous.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Larson, through his non-work related @MalcoImFLeX Twitter account, is a shitposter and troll in the classic sense. His tweets range from absurd to surrealistic and are often aimed at provoking the ire of those Larson believes take the internet and its ensuing discourses far too seriously. His tweets traffic in the kind of post-irony humor that might leave those who aren\u2019t terminally online scratching their heads \u2014 and that\u2019s partially the point.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEven after he said I made a tweet about Nancy Pelosi I still didn\u2019t get how I fucked up,\u201d Larson said. \u201cAnd then he said the tweet mentioned \u2018shooting your shot.\u2019 I quickly realized it looked like I was threatening a politician.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

PPB public information officer, Sgt. Kevin Allen, confirmed to <\/span>EW<\/span><\/i> in an email that a Sgt. Matt Jacobs did reach out to Larson with a concern over the tweet\u2019s meaning, but said he can\u2019t provide specifics about how the police bureau investigates potential threats.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>When there is a specific event, such as the visit of a dignitary, officers assigned to our intelligence unit typically engage in a limited scan for posts that might indicate a threat and may complete a follow-up investigation depending on the circumstances,\u201d Allen said. \u201cBut I do want to say that PPB does not \u2018scour social media for threats.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Larson, Jacobs asked how he knew Pelosi was going to be in Portland.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Larson replied that he knew because of his job as a field organizer for the 1st congressional district at the Democratic Party of Oregon. Jacobs then told Larson that he\u2019d been at the event and that the police showed Larson\u2019s DMV photo to organizers at the event, including his boss at the DPO\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFortunately, my boss is on the younger side,\u201d Larson said. \u201cHe saw the tweet and was like \u2018This is obviously a joke and not even a joke about hurting someone,\u2019 so fortunately they were both very, very cool with it and just kind of laughed at me, which is fair because it\u2019s ultimately pretty funny.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Larson told <\/span>EW<\/span><\/i> that the Portland police never asked him to delete the tweet in question, but that his boss recommended it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I wasn\u2019t about to argue,\u201d Larson said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Representative for Pelosi did not respond to a request for comment on whether or not she\u2019d accept a date with \u201cBi-Racial Angel.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When he began listening to a voicemail and realized it was from an officer of the Portland Police Bureau, the Oregon Democratic Party field organizer \u2026 Continue reading\u00a0\u2192<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,101,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-ew-extra","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180096\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}