Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> CIA, FBI computers used for Wikipedia edits
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | The changes may violate Wikipedia's conflict-of-interest guidelines, a
> | spokeswoman for the site said on Thursday.
> |
> | The program, WikiScanner, was developed by Virgil Griffith of the Santa
> | Fe Institute in New Mexico and posted this month on a Web site that was
> | quickly overwhelmed with searches.
> `----
>
>
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyid=2007-08-16T224359Z_01_N16428960_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-WIKIPEDIA.xml
> http://tinyurl.com/2om2aq
>
Isn't the whole point of allowing anyone to edit articles that corrections
can be made. So that eventually each article ought to be a complete and
accurate record, provided the last to edit it knew what they were talking
about.
Or does that edit facility only apply to people who are least likely to know
what they are talking about, don't want experts coming into Wikipedia and
showing up all the self opinionated seemingly uneducated morons. That would
never do would it.
The CIA's change seemed believable to me, it didn't change the substance of
the item, if anything changing hard values to 'estimated, not broken down'
is better for the activist types who roam those pages, hardly words to give
advantage to the CIA if they had intended decieving people. Because the
item now effectively says 'We don't know how many died and no records were
taken other than an estimate, so if you lost a mother/brother/sister, then
they may well have been in the pile of bodies, but we can't tell you if
they were or not.
It always seems stupid to me that the US people take such a dim view of
their own security forces. Americans are ready to rubbish them and inhibit
their actions at every turn. Of cause groups such as the CIA have to be
monitored, but that can be done at the same time as supporting them.
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