Wackypedia blocks US Department of Justice IP for "vandalism"
29 Apr 2008 | 22:10 BST
Sticks and stones
WIKIPEDIA HAS BLOCKED an IP address which purportedly belongs to the US Department of Justice, after at least two attempts to edit an article were deemed “vandalism”.
The whole convoluted tale starts with a pro Israel organisation called CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), which seems to have been trying rather hard to increase its influence and clout on the collective encyclopedia, without anybody finding out. Like having a powerful US lobby isn’t enough.
Needless to say, the attempts failed. The propagandists' arch net nemesis Electronic Intifada got wind of the dodgy attempts through several clumsily leaked emails between CAMERA and willing Wikipedia contributors which alluded to the fact that it was trying to tip the bias of the articles in Israel’s favour.
The aim was to "cooperate with prominent Wikipedia editors to promote a Zionist viewpoint and oppose pro-Arab viewpoints on Wikipedia". As all is fair in love and cyber war, Electronic Intifada published the leaked emails on April 21st, provoking ire and disgust.
A march 13th email published by the Electronic Intifada, apparently hailing from Gilead Ini, a Senior Research Analyst at CAMERA, called for pro Israeli volunteers to ensure that any entries or articles on the site were "free of bias and error, and include necessary facts and context". Basically, twist the truth if necessary to make Israel look good.
A few days later, obviously just remembering that dirty plots to hijack public media weren’t always appreciated, Ini made sure to write a follow up email, calling for discretion and asking email recipients not to "forward it to members of the news media". Well, we can see how that’s worked out for him,.
Even worse were later emails (which Electronic Intifada also managed to get its hands on) between CAMERA members sharing tips about how to get themselves elected as Wikipedia administrators, allowing them to edit any number of articles in Israel’s favour, or give certain pages a more anti-Arab stance.
One tip, posted by a Wackypedia user calling himself 'Zeq' advised that any "who want to take this route should stay away from any Israel realted [sic] articles for one month until they [sic] interact in a positive way with 100 wikipedia [sic] editors who would be used later to vote you as an administrator. " With spelling as bad as that, you’d think he’d be a shoo-in for the job.
But the plot thickened when another wackypedia user, 'Bangpound', was so outraged by the published emails that he saw fit to edit the CAMERA organisation’s own wiki page, adding the information published by Electronic Intifada to it. Just three short days later, however, Bangpound’s citation was deleted, along with the entire subsection devoted to the controversial emails, by an IP address which was hosted by 'wdcsun30.usdoj.gov' and was directly traced back to the US Department Of Justice.
The same IP address also went on to vandalise other articles, including one o n James E. Akins, who was the American ambassador to Saudi Arabia between 1973 and 1975 and who is also a fellow on the US Iran Policy Committee. Wackypedia purportedly warned the IP user several times before slamming them with a four day ban on grounds of "repeated vandalism."
Wikipedia also decided to block several other users who they said were collaborating with CAMERA in a disgraceful attempt to turn articles on the site to their advantage.
So Electronic Intifada has won its cyber battle for now. It’s just a shame that not all wars are waged online. µ
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