“This was like a scene out of 24”, said the neurosurgeon whose supposed Twitter update lead to the whole fiasco.
Dr. Jack Kruse from Nashville, TN boarded the Carnival Magic in Galveston, TX on Sunday to give a presentation about his unique diet plan. But before the ship could even leave port he had his room crawling with FBI and Homeland Security agents.
“They blew up the room looking for things. They went through my bags,” said Kruse. “I had no idea what I was being accused of. They went out of their way not to tell me.”
So how did this all start? It all began with someone who was using Twitter as Dr. Kruse himself and posted a tweet about having a vial of a disease for a bio-hazard attack on the ship.
You can read the “bleeped-out” tweet below:
Someone noticed the tweet, contacted Carnival, and Carnival contacted the FBI. Dr. Kruse was later removed from the ship while he was questioned.
Yesterday, Carnival released a letter stating confirmation that the tweet did not come from the real Dr Jack Kruse. You can read the letter here. In the letter the cruise line apologizes for any inconvenience to those who were going to attend the diet seminar from the Doctor.
After clearing his name, Carnival offered to fly Kruse to the next port of call to meet up with the cruise ship and rejoin the voyage, but he had to refuse due to another speaking engagement.
Although it might seem like an overreaction, the FBI and Homeland Security agents were just doing their job, and it is unfortunate that Dr. Jack Kruse had to endure these kinds of accusations. But it would have been even more unfortunate had this been a real bio-attack and nothing was done.
The real question this situation raises is how other people can use social media accounts in your name. This is something that should have been confirmed before Dr. Kruse’s room was torn apart, but there are plenty of “fake” accounts out there both on Facebook and Twitter and even Google Plus.
With legal experts not giving any insight in how to keep this from happening again, it’s up to you to search for any other accounts in your name and contact those websites. One legal expert recommends suing any person who is impersonating your with their social media account, but seek legal counsel first.
What do you think about this? We’d love to hear from you. Just leave a comment below.
The tweet was not at all “under his handle.” On twitter ” [stuff]someguysays” is a tweet account *convention* for a parody or third-person relating what another person says account, either as comedy or criticism. ( e.g. , @[stuff]Mydadsays @[Stuff]Jeffersonsays @[stuff]Chersays …)
Even if one is ignorant of twitter conventions, how likely is it that any serious person with a professional reputation and/or commercial enterprise with a following use a twitter account under such a vulgar “handle” in favor of his own name or the name of his enterprise? Think that through for one second. please.
That bit of common sense evaluation lacking, the content of the account itself establishes the context of a joke or satire account. There was simply no basis, absent language barrier or bad-faith, or total want of sense, to consider that an actual threat, or to believe that account belonged to Kruse.
Kruse is something of a charlatan/kook and he has a reputation for claiming outrageous or exaggerated things. He’s even been suspended from a professional neurosurgery society for giving false testimony in a deposition (as an expert witness). People make fun of the things he says; and the account on twitter that is used to do is completely typical of twitter accounts used for that purpose.
I think the fbi could stand to learn the rudiments of social media as an aid to threat evaluation.
The media has twisted this story to a bizarre degree. @s**tkrusesays was clearly a parody account and Dr. Kruse was well aware of it, having had several of the posts re-Tweeted to him by the account’s followers (which included Jimmy Moore, the organizer of the cruise on which Kruse was supposed to speak, and several well-known people in ancestral health field). It seems that Carnival, perhaps goaded by whoever called the company, misinterpreted the Tweet, which referenced Kruse’s use of dynamite as a prop at another talk (http://bit.ly/Ke4c9q) and his bizarre claim that he injected himself with a highly dangerous bacteria, MRSA, prior to undergoing elective surgery (http://bit.ly/Ke4c9q). Kruse has perpetuated several falsehoods about this case–e.g., that his identity was stolen, that his Twitter account was “hacked”, that he was the victim of a “bioterrorism” hoax. The phrase “epic biohack” is one that Kruse uses repeatedly to refer to his own self-experimentation. Over the last few days, however, he seems more than willing to allow people to misinterpret the phrase as “epic bio attack.” I initially had sympathy for him, but that is long gone. He’s clearly loving this publicity. And he had the gall to insinuate that certain critics of his are responsible for this incident, even though he apparently has no solid evidence against them (he made a bogus claim in one interview that the “ringleader” of some group conspiracy against him lives in NY). People reading this story should know that Kruse is a man who was censured by his professional society for lying under oath during a deposition (http://bit.ly/Ke4c9q). That information alone makes it hard for me to believe anything he says. He is also notorious for making exaggerating claims about the health benefits of practices he espouses (he has claimed, for example, that cold thermogenesis–exposing oneself to cold temps, essentially–is a valid treatment for obesity, hypothyroidism, and any autoimmune disorder you can think of). There is certainly an interesting story to be told about Dr. Kruse, but this article about him getting kicked off a cruise ship doesn’t even scratch the surface.