French Intelligence Agency Forces Wikipedia Volunteer to Delete
Article; Re-Instated, It Becomes Most-Read Page On French Wikipedia
from the not-so-clever dept
Last week, we wrote about an organization that was
unhappy
that a Wikipedia article no longer existed. Now we have the opposite
problem: an organization unhappy because a Wikipedia article does exist.
And not just any organization, but the
"Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intéieur" (Central Directorate of
Interior Intelligence, DCRI), a French intelligence agency, which
suddenly decided that an article about a military base contained
classified information, and wanted it deleted. As
the English-language Wikipedia article on the subject explains:
The Wikimedia Foundation asked the
intelligence agency what precise part(s) of the article were a problem
in the eyes of the intelligence agency, noting that the article closely
reflected information in a freely available television broadcast. The
DCRI refused to give these details, and repeated its demand for deletion
of the article.
Wikipedia refused to delete it, and then
things took a nasty turn, as a press release from the Wikimedia Foundation explains:
Unhappy with the Foundation's answer, the DCRI summoned a
Wikipedia volunteer in their offices on April 4th. This volunteer,
which was one of those having access to the tools that allow the
deletion of pages, was forced to delete the article while in the DCRI
offices, on the understanding that he would have been held in custody
and prosecuted if he did not comply. Under pressure, he had no other
choice than to delete the article, despite explaining to the DCRI this
is not how Wikipedia works.
As the Wikimedia Foundation goes on to note:
This volunteer had no link with that article, having
never edited it and not even knowing of its existence before entering
the DCRI offices. He was chosen and summoned because he was easily
identifiable, given his regular promotional actions of Wikipedia and
Wikimedia projects in France.
This is very similar to the situation discussed last week, where
Benjamin Mako Hill seems to have been targeted because he, too, was
easily identifiable. As we noted then, putting pressure on Wikipedia
volunteers in this way is extremely problematic, since it naturally
discourages others from helping out. As Wikimedia wrote in its press
release:
Wikimedia France cannot understand how bullying and
coercitive methods can be used against a person dedicated to promote the
freedom and knowledge. As Wikimedia France supports free knowledge, it
is its duty to denounce such acts of censorship against a French citizen
and Wikipedia editor.
Has editing Wikipedia officially become risky behaviour in France? Is
the DCRI unable to enforce military secrecy through legal, less brutal
methods
There is also the interesting question of how a national
intelligence
service only found out about the article now, several years after it
was first added: this hardly suggests a firm grasp of what's happening
in the online world. That's confirmed by the fact that the deleted
article is, of course, back on line, in
French
and a dozen other languages. Moreover, the DCRI's ham-fisted attempt
to censor an extremely obscure Wikipedia page that hardly anyone ever
visited, has achieved exactly the opposite effect:
in the last few days, the page has been viewed over 45,000 times. This is
how the article about the not-so-secret military installation now concludes:
As a result of the controversy, the article became the
most-read page on the French Wikipedia. It was translated into multiple
other languages. The French newspaper 20 minutes noted it as an example
of the Streisand effect in action.
Will they never learn?
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