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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?"
...would be "is there a major web-site which doesn't have a presence from at least one intelligence agency?"
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.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
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.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Nothing to see here, please move along.
Alcohol and Calculus don't mix. Don't drink and derive.
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...
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.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
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 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...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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.
I agree. That dude is nuts. You should just ignore him.
Linda Mack
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.
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 ) 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.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
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.
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.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
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
No statement is true, not even this one.
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.
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.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
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.
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.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
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.Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
The last time I checked, Wikipedia sysops had no more ability to see deleted revisions of articles than anyone else (that is, they can't even see that they were deleted). Viewing deleted revisions required oversight powers. As an example of a deleted revision, Daniel Brandt claims that SlimVirgin's first edit to Wikipedia was an edit relating to her allaged real-workd identity and that it has since vanished. The edit in question now shows up as part of a later edit by CanisRufus with an unrelated edit summary, which is what exactly what we'd see if the revision in question had existed and had been oversighted.