Wikipedia Infiltrated by Intelligence Agents?

Wikipedia Infiltrated by Intelligence Agents?

english.ohmynews.com

International Humanitarian Law professor Ludwig Braeckeleer reveals a discovery he made while researching a story on the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland.

It turns out that a Wikipedia administrator named SlimVirgin is actually Linda Mack, a woman who as a young graduate in the 1980s was hired by investigative reporter Pierre Salinger of ABC News to help with the investigation. Salinger later came to believe that Mack was actually working for Britain's MI5[...]

(visit the link for the full news article)

More from the article's story description:

Shortly after her (SlimVirgin/Linda Mack) Wikipedia identity was uncovered, many of her edits to articles related to the bombing were permanently removed from the database in an attempt to conceal her identity.

I think it's obvious that it makes perfect sense for intelligence agencies to monitor and infiltrate places like wikipedia and Google for control, propaganda and disinformation purposes.

The story snippet was taken from the slashdot news entry where I first heard about this.

english.ohmynews.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

It would be insane for them not to take advantage of such great tools like Wikipedia. The Internet is the ulitimate memetic engineering tool. In other words disinfo and propaganda fill not only wikipedia but the Internet as a whole.

I have no doubt that people are out there "sanitizing" and "shaping" the knowledge in Wikipedia. I've seen many pages which suffer from this "phenomenon". Some of the best are the pages of large corporations IMHO.

It's hardly surprising though is it? If there was a Wiki page about you and people kept adding entries about your background you'd rather not want mentioned, you'd edit it to your benefit.

The good thing about Wikipedia is that everyone has the power to correct the entries...






.

[edit on 28-7-2007 by sbardca1]

A few delete requests and other BS from Intelligence and your
wiki page bites the dust.

I tried to put some goodies in from William Lyne and
had to move to it talk section:
my talk page

Also put up link to photobucket photo of Triangle aether craft
that was posted here at ATS.

Photo link

Check all the requests for deletion.
And this is in the talk section.

Most likely connected with:
Original info page

Here is my activity:
activity
So now lets see if there is any Intelligence on ATS.



[edit on 7/28/2007 by TeslaandLyne]

To wikepedias credit they seem to catch people pretty quickly . duriing a search for "hermetic order of the golden dawn" I found one party who was contributing under 3 or 4 aliases blocked and banned, and they slammed him good leaving all his aliases up for public query, as well as forum remarks. Imagine if these were school texts books or any published hardcopy spreadout thru the country. Try correcting that. at least with wiki you have greater leverage for damage control and self/public correction assuring a much better product.

SyS

Originally posted by sbardca1
........
The good thing about Wikipedia is that everyone has the power to correct the entries...

Is that really a good thing?

There are too many people with claims which have no corroboration at all, the ability of anyone to change information in wiki is actually bad, more so since there are a lot of people out there that just want attention and would make up stories for some fame.

I've _never_ considered Wikipedia an authoritative place for knowledge. It's great for general information and leads when investigating something.

I'm fairly certain that some corporations, people and governments have staff which check wikipedia regularly and "correct" anything they think is "wrong".

Yes Discomfit thats why I use an old fashion library for my research, for primary sources. I don't think a professor would accept wikipedia, unless he is lazy and not really reading my paper. The amount of self correction is a good thing thing, but as you well point out ,that does raise the issue of reliabilty. I would look at it like a sort of nifty E-Gilberts or E-Cliffs notes for a quick study. I remember them so fondly.

SyS