Wikipedia Infiltrated by Intelligence Agents? 428
An anonymous reader writes "International Humanitarian Law professor Ludwig Braeckeleer thinks so. In an article published yesterday in the Korean newspaper OhMyNews, he reveals a discovery he made while researching a story on the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland. It turns out that a Wikipedia administrator named SlimVirgin is actually Linda Mack, a woman who as a young graduate in the 1980s was hired by investigative reporter Pierre Salinger of ABC News to help with the investigation. Salinger later came to believe that Mack was actually working for Britain's MI5 on a mission to investigate the bombing and to infiltrate and monitor the news agency. Shortly after her Wikipedia identity was uncovered, many of her edits to articles related to the bombing were permanently removed from the database in an attempt to conceal her identity. This discovery comes only months after another Wikipedia admin was caught lying about his credentials to the press. What can Wikipedia do about those who would use it for their own purposes?"
A better question... (Score:5, Insightful)
Its a highly visible site... (Score:4, Insightful)
OTOH, compared to what covert agents do outside of Wikipedia, I can hardly see much reason for alarm.
"What can Wikipedia do...?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't you rather have someone writing stuff that can be corrected by anyone than have a publisher infiltrated and subsequently print untrue (yet unchangeable) information?
Of course, through ignorance or apathy or downright malevolence, any source produces at least some erroneous information anyway...
why SHOULD widipedia do anything? (Score:5, Insightful)
Depending on the purposes! (Score:5, Insightful)
What a retarded question... Don't we all use Wikipedia for our own purposes? The reaction — if any is needed at all — should depend on the purposes.
A covert agent of a reasonably democratic government investigating a crime is one thing. A pseudo-scientist lying about his credentials is another. A pranskter vandalizing pages is the third. An overt agent of a reasonably democratic government pushing their government's view [slashdot.org] is yet another. And so on... And then, of course, come the rest of us using the resource to learn, teach, and immortalize ourselves via contributions...
Re:Anonymous Cowards unite (Score:1, Insightful)
SHUT THE FUCK UP.
So Prove it Already (Score:4, Insightful)
So, show me the 'before' and 'after' of the edits. Surely Google cache or Archive.org or any of the other search engines have that page from some point in the past, no? How about even a locally cached copy (certainly not tamper proof)?
Or... have all of the people who might have a cached copy also been infiltrated? We know how that story goes.
Carry On (Score:3, Insightful)
Carry on exactly as they are, because that is precisely what every contributor is doing. Their purpose may be an attempt at the truth, which is noble, but also subjective, and some will disagree. They too will contribute if they care enough. With enough of that, any other "purposes" will be, if not buried, then at least illuminated. Where that could fail is if there are not enough who care enough to contribute.
So what are you still here for?
Indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously the fact that a twenty-something was caught posing as a Catholic theology professor lends credence to the accusation by a former Kennedy administration official that MI5 has penetrated Wikipedia.
...
Don't you fools see? Kennedy was Catholic, and Essjay claimed to be Catholic! TELL THE WIKIT$&$^^$^&NO CARRIER
Actions, not motives (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as their contributions are valid, it does not matter why they contribute. If you wouldn't delete a given contribution from a PHD, you shouldn't delete it from a highschool student either, because it's the contribution itself that is either good or bad, not the source. The validitity of contributions should be derived from itself (including references provided, which is explicitly required by Wikipedia policies), and it has nothing to do with who actually contributes, because you may not use yourself or your reputation as a reference.
Likewise, it's wrong to censor someone's contributions just because you think he has a political agenda. As long as (and only as long as) the content submitted is valid and conforms to all policies (neutrality, references, no original research), it should make no difference whatsoever what agenda the contributor has.
Let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Pierre Salinger (Score:5, Insightful)
(Putin murdering people with radioactive isotopes, the French blowing up anti-nuclear vessels, Scientology break-ins at federal offices, acoustic kitty, LSD experiments on civilians, Tuskagee experiments, etc. etc.)
Lets face it, the world is an incredibly fucked up place - and the idea of someone being planted to infiltrate a newspaper investigation is not bizarre at all in comparison.
Annoying Indeed. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be a little annoyed if the brain surgeons in our intelligence agencies -- who I, along with the rest of the taxpayers, bankroll -- weren't at least aware of Wikipedia. ... they're not doing anything I wouldn't expect them to be doing.
I do NOT want my government spending my money on disinformation. It's bad enough when they publish it openly, but lying about who you are while you vandalize a public resource is much worse. Freely elected governments are supposed to represent the opinions of their people, not brainwash them.
I fully expect that the Chinese, Russians, Iranians, etc., probably have propaganda agencies astroturfing Wikipedia and other web sites to their own advantage. This is what countries do.
No, that is what tyrants do. They also murder those who oppose them. They do both of these things because they are fucking everyone. They have placed their self interest above yours and do what it takes to keep that position.
No one does anything without his own purpose. (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh come on, let's think this out. Are you suggesting people who do edit it do not edit it for their own purposes (fame, showing off, to feel part of a virtuous movement)? Or are you suggesting they're robots acting purely from instinct?
Surely imagining that anyone does anything without personal motivation is deluded. We're not insects. But just because you have a personal motivation doesn't mean what you do is suspect. I go to work primarily to get money to buy myself stuff. That is not the motivation of the company founder, but that doesn't mean my work is corrupt -- or even that it's of lower quality than the founder's. The fact that I'm there for different reasons doesn't mean we can't work together profitably. What's important is the result of one's work, not the motivation for it.
Re:I experienced this as well on Wikipedia (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Like Amazon reviews... (Score:5, Insightful)
I sure hope not (Score:4, Insightful)
If they want to contribute true information to Wikipedia out of their own knowledge, well that's nice. If they want to contribute false information to Wikipedia for some obscure reason -- to fox the opposition, I guess, who are clueless newbs who believe anything they read on the 'net -- then that's an annoying waste of my tax dollars, but hardly seems worth raising a fuss over. If the Wikipedia has to rely on the honesty of every last J. Random Web User -- if they can't easily detect a nontrivial campaign of deliberate falsehood -- then they're clearly doomed. Because I can think of many groups other than "intelligence services" who would be very interested in easily spreading disinformation via a trusted source.
Re:Shameful this made it to the front page (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Transparency (Score:3, Insightful)
In the end, Wikipedia will fail through it's lack of a traditional authority structure, however much not having one has certain advantages.
One cannot expect a project of such a magnitude to survive in the real world (for all the talk of a "second life", people forget that the Internet is reality - part of our boring old society) without a sensible authority structure - and indeed rules decided by something else other than what sticks on a wiki. Even from a purely legal standpoint, Wikipedia is only going to have more trouble in the future than it can eventually handle.
Re:Multiplicity through Freedom yeilds Truth. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Transparency (Score:3, Insightful)
As I understand it, that a source is no longer in print does not prevent it from being a citable source that would satisfy WP:V, though obviously, where they are available, more accessible sources for the same information would be good. Non-public forms are a bit trickier; if they are essentially inaccessible (the de facto equivalent of unpublished works or internal memoranda), I would imagine they aren't suitable sources and thus, if they are the only support for a fact claim, that claim cannot (under policy) be made on Wikipedia; if they are merely hard to find, I think the situation is similar to what I suggest for an out-of-print source, acceptable but perhaps not preferred if there is an alternative.
Re:Transparency (Score:3, Insightful)
In reality, your view might be valid as a description of how Wikipedia works in a few highly controversial areas where people expend lots of energy. Much of Wikipedia works more like this: someone posts material without adequate references and with clear inaccuracies, and over time it gets progressively edited to better compliance with Wikipedia's stated policies, improving in quality.
In the end, we're all dead, and every business (even nonprofits) will fail, because every business is subject to risk at all times, and has finite, exhaustible resources, and thus every business is subject to gambler's ruin. So, really, prognostication that "in the end" Wikipedia will fail is not all that substantial.
Re:Transparency (Score:5, Insightful)
So, to support the idea that I am indeed being naïve, can you give me an example of how these individuals manage to exert pressure on others over the Internet? I don't really think "bullying" works very well over the Internet and multiple personal attacks will get one banned, anyway. Also, winning through having better arguments and the other editors agreeing with them (a self-selecting argument-based democratic consensus) seems to me to be quite a good way of dealing with things; please suggest a better one.
I'm assuming this hierarchy must work via some kind of conspiracy. I don't doubt there is the odd, small-scale conspiracy between a few friends going on (like IMing them to support you in some discussion), but I see little evidence of a greater cabal. In fact as an editor without a great deal of experience, it just so happens that I recently admonished two editors who turned out to be admins (who I guess would be the ones most likely running any cabal) about what I thought was their not following policy (I was probably a little too severe in retrospect), and they discussed this with me very politely with reasoned argument and one conceded some ground on it, as opposed to exerting pressure on me somehow.
Why did they remove the edits? (Score:3, Insightful)
The important revelation here isn't that there are intelligence agents using Wikipedia to spread propaganda -- being open to edit by most anyone means it'll pick up its fair share of people editing in bad faith, ranging from civilian vandals and scumbags to the government's equivalent. The important question here is why the hell did Wikipedia's admins cooperate with her -- protecting her by removing the content -- when she was outed? Everyone likes to argue over the credibility of the information they find on Wikipedia, and this does not help their credibility at all.
Re:A new low for Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A new low for Slashdot (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A Wikipedia sysop breaks this down (Score:2, Insightful)