Reuters: CIA, FBI computers editing Wikipedia

[Strelnikov]

Virgil Griffith's "WikiScanner" software discovered that IPs from the two government organizations were editing articles, with the CIA doing "work" on second Iraq War civilian casualties, William Colby's bio (adding elements on the "rural pacification" program that was part of the Phoenix Program), while the FBI removed photos of the Guantanamo Bay prison where 40 men are still imprisoned (many with no trial at all.)

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-secu ... 6020070816

The FBI would not respond, while the CIA said:

CIA spokesman George Little said he could not confirm whether CIA computers were used in the changes, adding that “the agency always expects its computer systems to be used responsibly.”

....Griffith said he developed WikiScanner “to create minor public relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike (and) to see what ‘interesting organizations’ (which I am neutral towards) are up to.”

It was not known whether changes were made by an official representative of an agency or company, Griffith said, but it was certain the change was made by someone with access to the organization’s network.

[ericbarbour]

Remember, this was from 2007. I've heard rumblings that Wikiscanner was yanked down because certain "paid editors" had an in with Jimbo and his butt-buddies. And didn't like seeing a publicly-available tool for tracking their article abuses. The database only handled edits from 2002 to 2007 anyway.

The WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE claims that Griffith took it down because it was costing too much to operate. We are expected to take him at his word.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiScanner
Said article was written by a weird mess of assorted users, including some admins like Ral315, RoyBoy, HaeB, Jpgordon, Piotrus and others. It is heavily patrolled and heavily "stepped on", which seems really pointless for an obscure article about a Wikipedia utility program that was taken offline in 2013.

[Strelnikov]

This had been reposted on Reddit at the Wikileaks subreddit - old news continually recycles through Reddit because the past gets forgotten very quickly.

r/Wikileaks is in a hard spot because Julian Assange is stuck in Belmarsh and they won't let him out, even though he served his time, because the British judiciary (with British intelligence leaning heavily on them, no doubt) wants to illegally extradite him to the US for a kangaroo court trial that will probably collapse because Assange wasn't hacking, he was posting the material the American government claims was hacked. Assange's fear is winding up in the Guantanamo Bay prison before, during, or after the trial - many of the people still in there were never tried and six of the forty could be released now, but Trump is idling, because Trump made the threat of sticking more people into this needless, unlawful black hole.

[The End]

The Wikiscanner article mentions "WikiWatchdog." What are its problems? Why isn't it as popular as Wikiscanner?

https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikiwatchdog/

[Strelnikov]

The Wikiscanner article mentions "WikiWatchdog." What are its problems? Why isn't it as popular as Wikiscanner?

https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikiwatchdog/

Good questions, and I would PM Eric Barbour for the answers.

[ericbarbour]

The Wikiscanner article mentions "WikiWatchdog." What are its problems? Why isn't it as popular as Wikiscanner?

1) it goes up and down like a yo-yo (typical of WMF Labs crap), and is down today.....
2) I've tried it, and never got any actually-useful information. So I suspect it's being "filtered".

[JuiceBeetle]

1) it goes up and down like a yo-yo (typical of WMF Labs crap), and is down today.....

Was down yesterday... and the day before that...