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Wikipedia Entries On NYPD Violence Get Some Edits From Headquarters

Posted by timothy on from the trust-the-police dept.

First reported by Capital, and picked up by Reason, it seems that "Computers operating on the New York Police Department’s computer network at its 1 Police Plaza headquarters have been used to alter Wikipedia pages containing details of alleged police brutality." Computer users identified by Capital as working on the NYPD headquarters' network have edited and attempted to delete Wikipedia entries for several well-known victims of police altercations, including entries for Eric Garner, Sean Bell, and Amadou Diallo. Capital identified 85 NYPD addresses that have edited Wikipedia, although it is unclear how many users were involved, as computers on the NYPD network can operate on the department’s range of IP addresses. Besides edits to entries about specific instances of misconduct, edits from the same NYPD IP blocks were discovered in Wikipedia entries about the city's stop-and-frisk program and about NYPD misconduct more generally.

4 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Surprise level: 0 by ihtoit · · Score: 4, Informative

    wikipedia is not nor is intended as a primary information source. What information is on there, if it is to remain, is backed by citations to original source.

    --
    Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
  2. Is this anything to do with the Garner case? by ihtoit · · Score: 4, Informative

    and the fact that Taisha Allen (one of the two people who recorded the choking death of Eric Garner) has been arrested and beaten by NYPD officers?

    http://rt.com/usa/240261-nypd-...

    It's public domain now, bitches! Edit THIS!

    --
    Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
  3. Re:Surprise level: 0 by ihtoit · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...

    --
    Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
  4. Re:NYPD by dcollins117 · · Score: 5, Informative

    But he broke into a Harvard networking closet (that's physical trespass),

    You mean he walked in. The door is always open. Hell, there were homeless people living in there at one point. Besides, this is a college campus we are talking about. MIT is an open campus.

    and rewired a router (that's computer trespass)

    That's an unfounded allegation, and "computer trespass" is not recognized in Massachusetts. Really, look it up.

    in order to download the journal articles that he otherwise did not have access to (or at least not at the speed with which he downloaded them

    The journal articles are freely available for downloading by anyone for any reason.

    The tragedy is that his life ended before he got a fair trial as none of the allegations against him had any real merit