Woman arrested for "poking" on Facebook

TENNESSEE -- A user of Palo Alto-based Facebook has been arrested. The woman in Hendersonville, Tennessee was taken into custody on charges of violating a restraining order. According to police, she had used Facebook's "poke" function toward the person who had filed that order.

    While there are any number of reasons for "poking," it's normally used to get the attention of another Facebook user and simply informs them that they've been "poked." However, the restraining order prohibited her from telephoning, contacting or otherwise communicating with that person, which could also be interpreted to include "poking."

For those who are unfamiliar with Facebook the “poke” function is an automatic email that when engaged sends a message to the one “poked” that so and so has poked you. So that here we have a fake poke, a automatic email that declares that so and so has poked you . . . and that for this act a woman was arrested and taken into custody for ‘Violating a court retraining order” This is madness on the part of the Police, the Judge, and especially on the part of the person being “Poked” to have called the police and brought the arm of the law upon this woman. This is political correctness at its worst, being arrested, being put in jail, being taken to court and getting a real jail sentence and a real fine – for something that is fake, that is pretend. Political Correctness is to the point that it is now being codified in the law as any number of crimes.

    The woman could be sentenced to up to one year in jail and ordered to pay up to $2,500 dollars in fines.

What should have been done? The email should have been deleted before it was read, in facebook the person could have blocked the sender and in a higher level could have sought to have that person’s ip adress(es) suspended on the site ending the pretend “poking”. Facebook poking does not begun to come to the level of a direct email or phone call.