Court Allows Arkansas To Hide Wikipedia Edits

rheotaxis writes "A circuit judge in Arkansas will not order the state to reveal where its computers were used to edit Wikipedia articles about former governor Mike Huckabee while he was running for President. Two Associated Press journalists used WikiScanner to track the edits to IP addresses used by the state. Writer Jon Gambrell and News Editor Kelly P. Kissel filed a suit in October 2007 asking the state to reveal which state offices used the IP addresses, because state rules don't allow using computer resources for political purposes. The director of the Arkansas Department of Information Systems, Claire Bailey, claimed in court that releasing this information would allow hackers to target these state offices."

Comments

Re:Secrecy or Transparency?

[RiotingPacifist]

I fail to see how network topology is something to be hidden, the computers either in front of a firewall and thus mappable anyway or behind one and so it doesn't really matter if you have the IPs because you cant send any traffic to them anyway.

A map of a bank's safe isn't much use if the bank is secure.

Re:Secrecy or Transparency?

[Gorshkov]

However, the security of systems relies at some point on the obscurity of certain pieces of data.

if it relies on obscurity, then it's not secure, period.

Whether it be a user password or a map of a network topology, the information itself has no real reason to be made public just for the sake of openness, one could argue.

A user password IS a secret, and is intended to be. Internal network topology is a way of organizing a network for administrative purposes, and is in NOT designed, nor CAN be be designed, to provide security.

Some topologies make it easier to secure certain things, yes - but that is an administrative consideration in selection of a topology made to make implementing security easier; it is not, in itself, a security measure.

Lastly .... the information was not sought "just for the sake of openness" - it was sought as part of the process to discover who had been engaged in criminal behaviour.

is the crime worth the possible destruction of the entire network at the hands of hackers?

If knowing which particular device is enough to give hackers the ability to destroy an entire network, there's a butt load and a half of network administrators working for the state that need to be fired - and the sooner, the better.

Re:Secrecy or Transparency?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Using government resources to edit wikipedia entries does not sound like an ethical thing to do, anonymously or not. In this case, it looks like taxpayer money being used for political gain, another no-no.