Why French Govt's Attempt to Censor Wikipedia Matters

In the end, the Streisand Effect prevailed, as you might expect, when a French domestic intelligence agency apparently browbeat a French citizen into removing content from Wikipedia. The attention caused the Wikipedia entry on a formerly obscure military radio site (English version) to leap in popularity not only in French, but in languages where it was formerly far less likely to have been noticed at all. Lauren Weinstein makes the case, though, that this sort of move isn't just something to shrug at or assume will always end so nicely. "Even though attempts at Internet censorship will almost all fail in the end, governments and authorities have the capability to make groups' and individuals' lives extremely uncomfortable, painful, or even terminated — in the process of attempts at censorship, and equally important, by instilling fear to encourage self-censorship in the first place."

Immense pressure

[saibot834]

Let me quote from a blog post [wikimedia.fr] that paints an even darker picture than the original story I submitted on /.

DCRI summoned a Wikipedia volunteer in their offices on April 4th. This volunteer, which was one of those having access to the tools that allow the deletion of pages, was forced to delete the article while in the DCRI offices, on the understanding that he would have been held in custody and prosecuted if he did not comply. Under pressure, he had no other choice than to delete the article, despite explaining to the DCRI this is not how Wikipedia works. [...]

This volunteer had no link with that article, having never edited it and not even knowing of its existence before entering the DCRI offices. He was chosen and summoned because he was easily identifiable [...]

Can you imagine the pressure they put this volunteer through? Threatening him with five years of prison [legifrance.gouv.fr] if he does not immediately comply and delete the article in the intelligence agency's offices? You think that doesn't matter?

Google self-censored Wash. DC and other sites

[girlinatrainingbra]

Google has self-censored sites in the Washington, D.C., area and other areas of military and national security interest at the request of the USA government. It's blurred the regions or limited the resolution at which users can scan the areas, such as Fort Knox or the Naval Observatory a.k.a. the Vice-President's Residence. It's also done that for China and India, South Korea, Australia, and others (I think) at those government's requests also.

http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/government [google.com] the name of that link speaks for itself
How Google And Bing Maps Control What You Can See [buzzfeed.com]
http://gizmodo.com/5907421/the-dutch-have-the-weirdest-google-maps-censorship [gizmodo.com]
and of course wikipedia's article on Map censorship by google and microsoft [wikipedia.org]

So if Google and MS and others already do all of this at the behest of the government, why are we surprised that the French government is trying to censor Wikipedia?

Re:Who is Laura Weinstein

[Sesostris III]

He's a he, not a she (Lauren, not Laura). It seems he's well enough known to warrant a Wikipedia entry - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Weinstein_(technologist) [wikipedia.org].

Re: Response

[JasterBobaMereel]

If the US government wants to shut Wikipedia down then they would have to shut down a rather large number of replica sites as well, the content is backed up all over the world in many cases outside the control of the USofA ....

They could fairly quickly kill the master site (to huge protest around the world) but the content would be safe elsewhere ...

Re: Response

[mbkennel]

"Show me one government that; if it doesn't do it's dirty work openly, doesn't have a "secret" agency of some other advertised value, that handles it's hoodlum urges. "

Iceland?