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French Intelligence Agency Forces Removal of Wikipedia Entry
saibot834 writes "The French domestic intelligence agency DCRI has forced a Wikipedia administrator to delete an article about a local military base. The administrator, who is also the president of Wikimédia France, has been threatened by the agency with immediate reprisals after his initial refusal to comply. Following a discussion on the administrator's noticeboard, the article (which is said to violate a law on the secrecy of the national defense) has been reinstated by a foreign user. Prior to pressuring the admin, DCRI contacted the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), which refused to remove the article. WMF claimed the article only contained publicly available information, in accordance with Wikipedia's verifiability policy. While the consequences for Wikimedia's community remain unclear, one thing is certain: The military base article – now available in English – will get more public awareness than ever before."
This is a terrific test case on secrecy laws. No one violated laws, no one is using secret information. All the proper people were notified and there was a clear cut request / order and a clear cut refusal to comply. At the same time this is military information. This is just about the perfect test case.
I wonder what that French agency which likes to create French words instead of using ones derived from other languages will coin to name the Streissand effect.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
That's military intelligence for you. Nice radio station you have there, France.
You can't handle the truth.
You don't need to devour spy novels or watch 007 all night long to understand one simple aspect of the story (as reported in the summary, at least): once news about X leak out, X is to be considered COMPROMISED.
In this case it is blatant. Something that shouldn't have been there is available? assume the bad guys got it, if it is important, STFU if it's not important.
So, this move from the French secret service is muscle flexing, or counterintelligence (making people concentrate on a decoy), or a way to make openness and free exchange of information look contrary to national interests.
It is not a way to increase national security.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
You can certainly understand the collective French nervousness regarding military secrets. Look what happened when that Maginot thing got out.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Let me show you something: page view statistics from the last 90 days.
The article had ZERO hits for months ... until yesterday.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
In this case the problem was not that Wikipedia was centralized. The Wikimedia Foundation in the US did not comply with the agency's demands.
The problem was that the administrator's real name was publicly known (he's a public figure and it's his username) so that they were able to find someone under French jurisdiction. Most admins and non-admins use pseudonyms and are thus immune to real-life pressure.
All in all, I'd say the system worked. The admin had to give in to the immense pressure, but he was sensible enough to publicly announce what he did, thus enabling foreign users to reinstate the article. Now, the really threatening cases are those with gag orders, such as given by US intelligence agencies.
Could have been worse like another time in New Zealand - at least they didn't sink Wikipedia's boat and kill their photographer.
ARE BELONG TO US!
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
There's a jurisdictional question: can the French government punish a French citizen for simply being part of the same organization as a non-Frenchman who breaks French law?
If it did, wouldn't that have given them better leverage over twitter?
Recall the french government sued twitter after they refused to hand over the names/IP addresses of some people who committed the horrible crime against humanity of trolling somebody else.
Instead of complying, twitter basically told them to GFY. I'd imagine that if there were any french people working for twitter, they would have been snagged by that.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
No, that was six British divisions and 39 French divisions. The French had closer to 900,000 men. The British Forces performed admirably, but were not exactly giving it their all; the BEF was most of the UK's officer corps and Kitchener at least was planning for the war to last a lot longer than the French or Germans had any idea. His plan was for the BEF to serve as the nucleus for a much larger (~1 million) army. Obvs can't do that if they're dead. And "well outside Paris" must mean something different to you than the rest of us. The German armies came to within 30-40 miles of Paris, famously within reach of the Parisian taxicabs, and it should be noted that the city of Paris is not itself a defensive structure. What else would count as "defending Paris"? Climbing up on the Arc de Triomphe and taking up a sniper position?
You're probably unaware, but the Germans had just marched through Belgium to get to France. Due to some imagined terror of the franc-tireur, they had just become famous for massacring and razing whole villages whenever they thought that were being shot at by Belgians. They would have been just as happy to do the same to Paris. Anything that didn't involve armies meeting in an open field was probably not so hot an idea.
Generally, unless you like getting your nation's seat of government burned to the ground, the way to defend your capital city does not involve fighting a pitched battle anywhere near the place. The premise of the original joke is retarded.
Anti-French sentiment is equally retarded, considering that the Revolutionary War was nothing more than a proxy war against the British. France had the largest economy and military in the world at the time, and spent over a billion livres fighting in the Americas. They directly funded the revolution, provided most of the rifles, and fielded a highly effective army, as well as providing military advisers. They also fought a highly successful naval campaign -- the United States had no ships of the line, which is more or less equivalent to having no navy at all. The Battle of Chesapeake decided the Battle of Yorktown, which I am sure that your history books have taught you decided the entire war. Guess how many Americans took part in Chesapeake. It is completely accurate to say that the United States would not exist today if not for France. Generally a good ROI for them considering WWI and WWII, but not at the time. The depth of ignorance required to harbor hostility against the French is frankly astounding, and it is deeply to the US's shame that this is so prevalent.
The Manhattan Project was successfully kept secret from the Germans, which was the primary goal. The German atomic program never got very far. How well the secret was kept is known, because, after the war, the major German physicists were interned in a big house in England and the house was bugged. The "Farm Hall Transcripts" record what they said. They didn't know how to enrich uranium in quantity. They didn't know how to make a workable bomb. Their calculations on assembly time for a gun bomb were way off; they didn't think a gun bomb would work. They had no clue about implosion.
you know that the editors of Astounding an early SF mag worked out that something was going on at Los Alamos because of all the subscriptions form the staff there.