Wikipedia shows CIA page edits

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An online tool that claims to reveal the identity of organisations that edit Wikipedia pages has revealed that the CIA was involved in editing entries.

Wikipedia Scanner allegedly shows that workers on the agency's computers made edits to the page of Iran's president.

It also purportedly shows that the Vatican has edited entries about Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.

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Joe Turner(Condor/Robert Redford): Listen. I work for the CIA. I am not a spy. I just read books! We read everything that's published in the world. And we... we feed the plots - dirty tricks, codes - into a computer, and the computer checks against actual CIA plans and operations. I look for leaks, I look for new ideas... We read adventures and novels and journals. I... I... Who'd invent a job like that?

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Originally posted by Michelle:
Wow. Well, the good thing about Wikipedia, however, is that people can edit it back after these stooges have defaced the articles with propaganda.

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Surely, interested parties of all kinds edit articles on topics that concern them.

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Originally posted by Fidel:
You mean goldbricking Vatican and CIA spooks(and UofT professors apparently) ...

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Originally posted by torontoprofessor:

Surely, interested parties of all kinds edit articles on topics that concern them.

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Yes, but a CIA staffer "editing" a post on Ahmedinejad?

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It should also be pointed out that the fact that a CIA or Vatican computer was used to edit a Wikipedia article does not mean that the CIA or the Vatican approved of that editing decision.

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True. But if you vandalized Wikipedia from a U of T computer, and the U of T were asked about it, I would expect them to disassociate the U of T from your activity. Here, on the contrary, is how the CIA reacted:

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When asked whether it could confirm whether the changes had been made by a person using a CIA computer, an agency spokesperson responded: "I cannot confirm that the traffic you cite came from agency computers.

"I'd like in any case to underscore a far larger and more significant point that no one should doubt or forget: The CIA has a vital mission in protecting the United States, and the focus of this agency is there, on that decisive work."

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Originally posted by torontoprofessor:

I would prefer not to be baselessly accused of goldbricking. If you did not intend to accuse me of this, then I apologize for misreading your post.

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Okay that was a bad choice of words, and I apologize. I meant to imply that Vatican and CIA spooks might be goldbricking from their normal spooking hours when shadowing web sites like wiki. Or perhaps it's in their general Joe Turnerish job description to shadow web sites and making with the anonymous edits. I don't know, because I'm not CIA or KGB or even FSB.

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Originally posted by torontoprofessor:
I would like to note what a terrible spy that CIA employee would make.

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That would be about par for the course, no?

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If I were working for the CIA and wanted to vandalize a Wikipedia article, I sure as hell wouldn't do it from a CIA computer!

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Exactly. You'd do it from a UofT computer. Oh, wait, I see what you mean...

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I'd pop over to the nearest Internet cafe, where such things can be done anonymously (Internet cafes general do not record the identity of their clients).

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So what's your best guess as to why this happened from a CIA computer, and why the CIA didn't deny it?

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Originally posted by torontoprofessor:
I would like to note what a terrible spy that CIA employee would make. If I were working for the CIA and wanted to vandalize a Wikipedia article, I sure as hell wouldn't do it from a CIA computer! I'd pop over to the nearest Internet cafe, where such things can be done anonymously (Internet cafes general do not record the identity of their clients).

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Perhaps that particular CIA employee wasn't as techno savvy as most of them are. I imagine the CIA at times is like a big, slow-moving corporate entity which sometimes isn't all that efficient in new recruitment drives and training.

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Can't trust any source any more...

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You mean you used to trust Wikipedia as a source? As the CIA "spook" allegedly inserted before an entry on Ahmadinejad: Wahhhhhh!

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Originally posted by unionist:
My view: The CIA (and its political-social-economic masters) hates Wikipedia. I'll go further: They hate public access to the internet. It lets people talk and find out stuff.

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I think that's partly true. I think they're caught in a dilemna of their own corporate handmedown culture. The beginnings of the internet were ARPANET, MILNET and expanded to leased lines through the public switched telephone network to enhance academic research. And that ended up being an important driver of their economy with transfers of publicly-funded research and technology to the corporate domain.

Really, it is an open source. I look at a lot of articles and it requires various sources bouncing information off each other to eventually find a relatively neutral ground between two fairly biased points of view. I don't see a major issue in this. If anti-CIA and anti-Vatican sources (ie, this board) is allowed to edit articles with information that can be contested then why can't they?

edit:: and could you EVER trust Wikipedia? According to the rules of citing a source in an essay for UoT you probably shouldn't.

[ 15 August 2007: Message edited by: Papal Bull ]

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Originally posted by John K:

You mean you used to trust Wikipedia as a source?

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I was kidding, John K. Hey, why isn't there an emoticon which simply means "I'm kidding", and no more?

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Sorry unionist, couldn't resist.

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You're forgiven. But we do offer sarcasm-management programs in my union...

This obvious ploy leaves us thinking 'oh boy those dirty tricks those spies are up to!' and then we walk away instead of asking 'If they did that so obviously, which ones did they do serepticiously, and for what purpose?
< /Tinfoil Hat >

[ 15 August 2007: Message edited by: quelar ]

edited in by Papal Bull (an agent of the Vatican/CIA/GRU/COMINTERN/FBI/CSIS/RCMP /NDP/LDP/DPJ/acronyms in general, etc.)::the smiley, I mean.

[ 15 August 2007: Message edited by: Papal Bull ]

Do I know it was ME that did it?

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Originally posted by Papal Bull:
It was edited out by the CIA and Vatican.

edited in by Papal Bull (an agent of the Vatican/CIA/GRU/COMINTERN/FBI/CSIS/RCMP /NDP/LDP/DPJ/acronyms in general, etc.)::the smiley, I mean.

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You're right! And I found the emoticon:

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Originally posted by Papal Bull:
Maybe quelar is Papal Bull

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WE are not Papal Bull....

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Originally posted by Papal Bull:
I don't see a major issue in this. If anti-CIA and anti-Vatican sources (ie, this board) is allowed to edit articles with information that can be contested then why can't they?

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I think what people are wondering is, why would the CIA want to edit wiki entries, and why so sloppy about leaving their electronic fingerprints all over it ?.

In general, the Americans like to have a say about public information within their circle of control. For four years I noticed most of my college text books were printed in either Texas or New York. It brought me to wondering when our feds refused to give us an explanation why there were so many CIA plane sitings in Ontario and across Canada during Dubya's rein.

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edit:: and could you EVER trust Wikipedia? According to the rules of citing a source in an essay for UoT you probably shouldn't.

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edit:: Fidel, if you cite wikipedia they'll disregard aforementioned citation and laugh at you. And do you want a TA laughing at you? It will destroy your self-confidence.

[ 15 August 2007: Message edited by: Papal Bull ]

PubMed and JAMA and CMA journals are accessable online. Who might want to read or cite those sources ?.

I think if trends with GATS and post-secondary education end up actuallyt working for people's benefit in the long run, then information will become even more accessable, and access to higher education more accessable through distance learning. The Cubans are already doing graduate level studies via satellite with Madrid and Barcelona. A Northern Ontario university is doing post-graduate studies with Abertay university in Scotland. What we need is more bandwidth for teleconferencing and real time communications. The internet now is at the foothills of development.

I like the general idea for wiki myself, and I'm sure that big news media conglomerates will find a way to screw it up for everybody at some point. Let's hope everything turns out hunkey dorey for the sake of the next generation and democracy in general eh.

[ 15 August 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by quelar:
As a good example of what I'm talking about is, I've been looking for a good book on South Saharan African history (and I'm still looking, recommendations are very welcome) but I have not been able to find one that was not written by someone from a colonial country. Personally I wouldn't mind actually getting the history from the people that lived there, not some old fart from Oxford who did a couple week long trips to Africa.

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Originally posted by unionist:
So what's your best guess as to why this happened from a CIA computer, and why the CIA didn't deny it?

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"I'd like in any case to underscore a far larger and more significant point that no one should doubt or forget: The CIA has a vital mission in protecting the United States, and the focus of this agency is there, on that decisive work."

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Originally posted by torontoprofessor:

well, if I were running the CIA, I would probably issue a simple "no comment". It's always a good idea to keep your cards close to your vest, especially if you're a spy agency!

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Over 11,000 changes to Wikipedia articles, including major edits to articles about parliamentarians, were discovered through use of WikiScanner, according to a Globe and Mail article Thursday. One such example showed the article on Paul Martin, which was edited to read "Paul Martin was the worst Prime Minister in Canadian history."

But Canadian examples may be among the most tame. Wired magazine has already compiled a list of "salacious edits." Among the more notable on the list: a user at Exxon-Mobil pooh-poohed the environmental impact of the Exxon Valdez oil spill; an FBI computer removed aerial images of Guantanamo Bay; and someone using a Reuters IP address called U.S. President George W. Bush a mass murderer.

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Here is an excerpt from the Wired Magazine Article.

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The result: A database of 34.4 million edits, performed by 2.6 million organizations or individuals ranging from the CIA to Microsoft to Congressional offices, now linked to the edits they or someone at their organization's net address has made.

Some of this appears to be transparently self-interested, either adding positive, press release-like material to entries, or deleting whole swaths of critical material.

Voting-machine company Diebold provides a good example of the latter, with someone at the company's IP address apparently deleting long paragraphs detailing the security industry's concerns over the integrity of their voting machines, and information about the company's CEO's fund-raising for President Bush.

The text, deleted in November 2005, was quickly restored by another Wikipedia contributor, who advised the anonymous editor, "Please stop removing content from Wikipedia. It is considered vandalism."

A Diebold Election Systems spokesman said he'd look into the matter but could not comment by press time.

Wal-Mart has a series of relatively small changes in 2005 that that burnish the company's image on its own entry while often leaving criticism in, changing a line that its wages are less than other retail stores to a note that it pays nearly double the minimum wage, for example. Another leaves activist criticism on community impact intact, while citing a "definitive" study showing Wal-Mart raised the total number of jobs in a community.

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Originally posted by Free_Radical:
In other words - "we've got more important things to be doing than farting around on Wikipedia"

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Well, the CIA never actually said that - and I do believe they consider disinformation to be part of their central mission, no?

By the way, someone broke a similar story two weeks ago:

Apparently, a high percentage of political candidates, and representatives, changes are being made from within government offices.

For example, Jason Kenney's had changes made to his Wiki entry taking out his voting against SSM, and adding some other positive, also not accurate spin, and this was done from a parliamentary office in Ottawa.

And Paul Martin's, at one point, read that he was the worst Canadian PM, a change also made from within the legislative offices in Ottawa.

It also featured no one other than Tom Long as a commentator on why politicians would have their Wiki entries edited. Exit Karl Rove enter Tom Long.

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Caltech graduate student Virgil Griffith just launched an unofficial Wikipedia search tool that threatens to lay bare the ego-editing and anonymous flacking on the site. Enter the name of a corporation, organization or government entity and you get a list of IP addresses assigned to it. Then with one or two clicks, you can see all the anonymous edits made from those addresses anywhere in Wikipedia's pages.

Griffith's work is a neat example of what can be uncovered just by reorganizing public information. Wired News writer John Borland has the full story here.

THREAT LEVEL predicts a lot of sad, embarrassing secrets will emerge from this project once netizens dive into it -- and we'd like to be a part of that. So visit the Wikipedia Scanner and do some sleuthing. Post what you find here on our wall of shame, where you can join other Wired News readers in voting submissions up or down. We've seeded the list with a few finds of our own. Happy hunting!

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