Wikipedia Infiltrated by Intelligence Agents?

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?"

Transparency

So maybe the question becomes, should those who contribute more (I don't know what the threshold would be) be required to reveal more personal identification details in order to ensure some level of transparency?

Jim
http://www.runfatboy.net/ [runfatboy.net] - A workout plan for beginners.

Re:Transparency

So maybe the question becomes, should those who contribute more (I don't know what the threshold would be) be required to reveal more personal identification details in order to ensure some level of transparency?

I have a better idea. Rather than an appeal-to-personal-authority based approach, maybe Wikipedia could adopt some policies regarding verifiability of claims, so as not to rely on the personal credibility of the submitter.

Re:Transparency

I have a better idea. Rather than an appeal-to-personal-authority based approach, maybe Wikipedia could adopt some policies regarding verifiability of claims, so as not to rely on the personal credibility of the submitter.

Which, in case you weren't been sarcastic, is exactly how Wikipedia does work. Stuff that isn't common knowledge having to be referenced is the cardinal rule of Wikipedia. See the Wikipedia:Verifiability (WP:V) [wikipedia.org] policy.

Also, the founder, Jimmy Wales, has commented many a time on the fact that Wikipedians should just remove unreferenced statements that are potentially controversial or that someone disagrees with.

In Wikipedia, appeals to personal authority don't work at all, unlike Britannica, which bases its entire approach on these. They are at either end of these extremes, andf both work to some extent. Being in the middle would like not work at all.

Re:Transparency

How does Wikipedia handle topics (like certain forms of proprietary technology) where the only published data sources might only exist in non-public forms (e.g., vendor manuals), or may not exist in published form at all anymore (e.g., out of print vendor manuals)?

Re:Transparency

I would assume you could still reference the manual, even though it isn't widely available, others may have access and could verify. Similar to me referencing Nature, Lancet, or Science News.
-nB

Re:Transparency

Exactly. It is pretty difficult to make up references, and if someone did think it was made up they could dispute it. If you have paraphrased in the body of the article, it is also quite common to include the exact quote from the referenced text in the footnote with the reference so that other users can check you've interpreted it right.

Re:Transparency

Which, in case you weren't been sarcastic, is exactly how Wikipedia does work. Stuff that isn't common knowledge having to be referenced is the cardinal rule of Wikipedia.

And that's been one of the key problems I've had with the Wikipedia from the beginning... Common knowledge to who ? Just because it's not common knowledge J. Random User, doesn't mean it's not common knowledge to a smaller more specialized community.
 
Heck, I was reading some articles on Pokemon last night (watched the cartoon out of boredom, decided to learn more), and very few statements presented as facts had any references - maybe they are common knowledge to Pokemon fans, but not to me. On the flip side, numerous edits I made to specialized articles that contained material that was common knowledge among folks active in that field were reverted because I couldn't provide a reference. Others were reverted because my reference was an extremely specialized $120 book - which contradicts the material available on the web.

Re:Transparency

Common knowledge to who ?

Well ideally every statement should be referenced that isn't common knowledge to everyone (e.g.: the sun rises every morning, objects fall towards the ground). In practice, especially since it currently takes so long to add a reference using slightly complicated templates (they're really needs to be a nice front end for referencing, but I digress), if there is a nearby link to another article (especially one covering a the more general topic of which the current article is part) which itself contains the appropriate reference (or even links to another article with it), this is deemed acceptable. Also, you don't have to reference to support exactly the same fact that you've already referenced earlier on in the same article, although it is quite easy to link to the same reference again once you've added it once to the article.

Just because it's not common knowledge J. Random User, doesn't mean it's not common knowledge to a smaller more specialized community.

I guess that is my point above: obviously in an article about New York opening "New York City is a large city in New York state in the United States", I don't have to reference that NY state is in the US (which is covered in the NYC article and common knowledge to a hell of a lot of readers). I can also probably get away with not referencing that NYC is large and a city, because no one is really going to dispute that. Anyway, although you can, you don't normally have to reference article preambles as their contents should be a summary of the rest of the article which should itself be referenced (e.g.: "large" is supported by population and area figures and comparisons further down), although you see this done on some controversial articles so that nothing sneaks in without a reference.

I was reading some articles on Pokemon last night...and very few statements presented as facts had any references - maybe they are common knowledge to Pokemon fans, but not to me.

I think you'll find that actually that is down to old problem Wikipedia has with articles of limited interest not getting copyedited (e.g.: references added) as only a handful of users (who may not be regular Wikipedians who know about referencing) edit them, which is, I guess, an argument for lack-of-notability deletions (though I'm moderately anti-deletionist). Also, in practice, it is unlikely that anyone is going to delete unreferenced content and demand a reference for a Pokemon article. I mean it isn't exactly the most controversial topic. Who is going to lie about Pokemon? Whereas adding a single word to Global Warming will likely result in someone reverting it and demanding mutiple peer-reviewed references, because it is a bit more controversial and important an article.

On the flip side, numerous edits I made to specialized articles that contained material that was common knowledge among folks active in that field were reverted because I couldn't provide a reference.

Well, add one or point to somewhere else on Wikipedia where it is mentioned and revert back, or engage in a discussion with that editor and others who edit the article on the talk page.

Others were reverted because my reference was an extremely specialized $120 book - which contradicts the material available on the web.

Well, include the exact quote from the book in the footnote and revert it back. Removing material without good reason, particularly when it is referenced, is pretty frowned upon and leads to suspicion that the editor just didn't like what was added. Get other interested editors involved or post a standard warning to that user's talk page about deletion if they are deleting stuff without explanation or with an explanation that is clearly bogus. If they continue doing that, they may be blocked.

Re:Transparency

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.

In the end, Wikipedia will fail through it's lack of a traditional authority structure, however much not having one has certain advantages.

I'm confused. I thought your argument was that it does have an authority structure.

One cannot expect a project of such a magnitude to survive in the real world

It seems to have "survived" 6 years with the number articles, readers and editors continually growing exponentially. Do you have any reasons why it might not survive? It seemed obvious to me that it would work from when I first heard about the model (for a number of reasons, like lots of editors making it more balanced and less NPOV, the ease of fixing mistakes, &c).

Even from a purely legal standpoint, Wikipedia is only going to have more trouble in the future than it can eventually handle.

Pray, tell me, what form this trouble will take, if you want me to believe you, lest I believe you are merely casting around weasel words as flamebait.

Re:Transparency

This [wikipedia.org] is an interesting example where Slim, and a few of her clique buddies, ganged up on somebody who was complaining about a possible image copyright violation. Rather than give any attention to the substance of the complaint (which apparently had validity, since the image was ultimately deleted), Slim and her friends kept character-assassinating the complainant, including attempting to use guilt by association based on other websites and IRC rooms he was in, a tactic specifically prohibited by the Wikipedia "No Personal Attacks" policy. In a major show of irony, they also accused him of violating that very same policy, and of trying to gang up on Slim. The clique seems to be very quick to accuse others of doing the stuff they do themselves all the time.

A better question...

...would be "is there a major web-site which doesn't have a presence from at least one intelligence agency?"

Comment 20016559 has been deleted.

Nothing to see here, please move along.

Re:A better question...

No, we can't be everyw... No wait: Nothing, you know nothing!

I sure hope not

Good golly, if my country's intelligence services are not monitoring every major web site (plus a lot of obscure minor web sites of which I've never heard), then they're incompetent idiots and I want them all shot, or at least fired.

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.

I read it on wikipedia

This discovery comes only months after another Wikipedia admin was caught lying about his credentials to the press.

This sort of thing is a compounding issue. In fact, this sort of activity has tripled in the last six months. I read that on wikipedia somewhere.

Re:I read it on wikipedia

This sort of thing is a compounding issue. In fact, this sort of activity has tripled in the last six months. I read that on wikipedia somewhere.

[clicky... clicky, clicky]

No you didn't.

Thank God this won't affect Wiki's primary market

I can't see why spooks would be editing entries about or favorite tv shows, comic book characters, science/fantasy books, technology entries, etc. Us geeks is safe.

Its a highly visible site...

...that influences popular perceptions, and anyone can contribute to it. Of course government agents are using it.

OTOH, compared to what covert agents do outside of Wikipedia, I can hardly see much reason for alarm.

Annoying Indeed.

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.

"What can Wikipedia do...?"

It can do what it's designed to do: self-edit.

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?

It's a site that's meant to inform. Does it matter if information is contributed under false identity? Information is either true or not. Judging whether it's true or not by who contributes is setting a very low standard for fact finding. Claims about knowledge that is outside of the expertise of layman have to have references to well-established sources (which can be checked) anyway. Otherwise, it's just rumors.

Pierre Salinger

Pierre Salinger was kind of a crackpot at this point in his career, so just because he believed somebody was an MI-5 operative doesn't mean much. He was a laughing stock because of all of his conspiracy theories at the time.

Re: Pierre Salinger

I agree. That dude is nuts. You should just ignore him.

Linda Mack

Re: Pierre Salinger

Mind you, if you were to truthfully describe some actual documented conspiracies and events to a person off the street, they'd think you were crazy too.

(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.

Like Amazon reviews...

The wikipedia community might want to take it on themselves to promote a "Real Name" system that casts suspicion on and removes the benefit of the doubt from those who choose to post anonymously.

I remember when Amazon went to that system after it was discovered how many negative reviews were authored by competing writers attempting to anonymously besmirch eachother in the review comments. Now you really find the highest rated reviews are almost exclusively by people who have chosen to forego anonymity for the benefit of having a trackable reputation.

Re:Like Amazon reviews...

The wikipedia community might want to take it on themselves to promote a "Real Name" system that casts suspicion on and removes the benefit of the doubt from those who choose to post anonymously.

How exactly would these real names be verified? Amazon can do it because they can compare the name you give with the name on your credit card, but that really isn't an option for community projects for all sorts of reasons.

Depending on the purposes!

What can Wikipedia do about those who would use it for their own purposes?

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...

First the internet. Next the mainstream media!

If this is happening on Wikipedia, the next logical step is the rest of the Internet and the rest of the mainstream media. I know it seems impossible now, but can you imagine if a far-left wing liberal editor was in charge of the editorial page of the New York Times? Or what if a neocon tycoon owned a 24-hour news network! If Wikipedia is having problems, our mainstream media is going to be next and lose the objectivity that it's currently known for.

So Prove it Already

OK, maybe Wikipedia is a tool of the Man, and it's deleting edits to cover the tracks of an intelligence agent.

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

> What can Wikipedia do about those who would use it for their own purposes?"

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?

Shameful this made it to the front page

It's shameful that this made it to the front page. The OhMyNews story that is cited isn't linked to. A quick glance at it (It's at http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_vi ew.asp?menu=c10400&no=374006&rel_no=1 [ohmynews.com] ) shows why - the writer's only source for his claims about Slim Virgin is the evidence collected by Daniel Brandt, who cyberstalked her publicly on The Wikipedia Review, a board populated by the banned trolls of Wikipedia. The article makes clear the degree to which this "investigation" is based on rumors and lies, and proceeds to publicly state the alleged name and city of residence of this person.

I am appalled that Slashdot decided to participate in this public character assassination of a private citizen.

Re:Shameful this made it to the front page

No, there are plenty of people who criticize the power structure of Wikipedia who are not banned.

On the other hand, there are fewer people who decide to criticize the power structure like Daniel Brandt does - stalking and outing the real names and cities of residence of Wikipedia editors. Those people, pleasantly, get banned.

I experienced this as well on Wikipedia

Here is an edit by someone coming from the IP 214.13.216.142 [wikipedia.org] on Wikipedia. His or her edits are focused on diminishing the massacre at No Gun Ri during the Korean War, as well as related atrocities during the Korean war.

Well, where is that IP from? At the time I did an nslookup and I resolved to n-mnstci-142.mnstci.iraq.centcom.mil (the IP now resolves to a different CENTCOM host, host216-142.iraq.centcom.mil). CentCom I remember from the film "Control Room", they are the people trying to spin the Iraq war for the world (and especially the US) media. But MNSTCI? A little checking around showed me MNSTCI stood for the United States Central Command's Multi-National Security Transition Command - Iraq.

I brought this up at the time, but everyone I brought it up to dismissed it. This is CENTCOM's job - US taxpayer's dollars to rewrite history, so that the US can keep going overseas militarily. It particularly annoyed me that I was paying the salary of the person trying to rewrite history. I kind of felt like I was battling someone in the bowels of the US's Orwellian version of "Minitru".

In the mid-1990s, I got a strange SNMP request from an army intelligence outfit in Quantico, Virginia after reading Australian web sites which discussed possible CIA involvement in overthrowing Australia's government in the 1970's (the Whitlam/Kerr thing). This was back in the (usually) non-NAT'ed days - I had just assigned this IP and had an unusual amount of monitoring set up, I'm sure most people would have noticed the query. With the PATRIOT act, split fibers at the major telcos going to who knows where and so forth, I guess this is normal nowadays. The next step for those who support all of this is to just to either dismiss it, or attack the people who complain about.

Re:I experienced this as well on Wikipedia

CentCom I remember from the film "Control Room", they are the people trying to spin the Iraq war for the world (and especially the US) media.

While, certainly, there are people in the PR arm of Centcom (and the Pentagon itself, and the White House) doing that, Centcom is the United States "Central Command", the regional combatant command in whose area of operations both the Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan are being fought, not simply a special-purpose spin shop.

This is CENTCOM's job - US taxpayer's dollars to rewrite history, so that the US can keep going overseas militarily.

being the part of the US military that is (in one particular area) overseas. Their job is fighting and winning wars, and preventing wars by having the capacity to fight and win them. Propaganda is part of that, of course, and no doubt they engage in some practices in the course of that against which there are legitiamte objections.

Indeed

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

Question people's actions, not their motives -- Cicero

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...

The evidence that Wikipedia has been infiltrated by Intelligence Agencies is that a woman who was a major contributor on the Lockerbie Pan Am bombing was a graduate student who investigated it for Pierre Salinger, but he came to suspect that she worked for MI-5. Note: not that he discovered that she worked for MI-5, just that he thought she did. Pierre Salinger is a man who in his later years demonstrated a gullibility for conspiracy theories.

Why did they remove the edits?

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.