Electronic Mischief

We are receiving an increasing number of “tips” about incidents involving social media “hacking” in Mercer County. A number of the incidents involve Facebook and other social media accounts that are being tampered with.

For instance, on our Facebook page and website, we were seeing many comments on our posts that were very negative and were aimed at distorting the discussion. When we checked their origins, many of these accounts were fictitious accounts (recently created) aimed at trying to discredit our website.

Recently one of our Facebook followers reported that his social media account was tampered with and that most of his comments being posted to our Facebook page were not coming from him.

Over the past two years, we have had a troubling amount of tampering that points, possibly, to concern regarding select officials in the county and internet service providers.

In the documents that we have received (see attached) via FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request from The Mercer County Sheriff’s Office, we are extremely concerned about their “big brother” tactics that attempt to control the thought and discussion within Mercer County.

The continued threats to our First Amendment rights in Mercer County coupled with the ongoing reports of social media tampering indicate a power structure that is attempting to hold its “control” by influencing the thoughts of its citizens. This is very troubling in a free society. This is what they do in China, not the United States!

We would like to ask those of you who have had any of your social media accounts hacked to provide us with information on what happened for an upcoming story. Especially let us know if your hacked account was posting to our social sites our or website. Email us your stories at jrasawehr@watchtv.net.