See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, The CIA

[Nomad559]

See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, The CIA, A Campaign

http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/08/wiki_tracker
On November 17th, 2005, an anonymous Wikipedia user deleted 15 paragraphs from an article on e-voting machine-vendor Diebold, excising an entire section critical of the company's machines. While anonymous, such changes typically leave behind digital fingerprints offering hints about the contributor, such as the location of the computer used to make the edits.

In this case, the changes came from an IP address reserved for the corporate offices of Diebold itself. And it is far from an isolated case. A new data-mining service launched Monday traces millions of Wikipedia entries to their corporate sources, and for the first time puts comprehensive data behind longstanding suspicions of manipulation, which until now have surfaced only piecemeal in investigations of specific allegations.
==============================================================
Some of this appears to be transparently self-interested, either adding positive, press release-like material to entries, or deleting whole swaths of critical material.

Voting-machine company Diebold provides a good example of the latter, with someone at the company's IP address apparently deleting long paragraphs detailing the security industry's concerns over the integrity of their voting machines, and information about the company's CEO's fund-raising for President George Bush.

[Mythsaje]

1. Obviously certain entries need to be monitored and restored

on a regular basis to counter this sort of activity.

It's too bad these assholes get PAID to do it, but, hey, them's the breaks.

[shance]

2. Why?

n/t

[Mythsaje]

3. Why what? n/t

[melody]

5. You're in favor of corporate censorship? n/t

[Tab]

4. Well, that's the danger with an open encyclopedia

Although I haven't used these features myself, I know Wikipedia offers monitoring features where you can tell if something has been edited and, if so, immediately respond if the edit was inappropriate/incorrect. Of course, this works two ways, but hey - that's the idea behind the product - anyone can edit it, and that means good OR bad.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

6. I don't wish to trash Wiki...

...I think it's a neat project, I use it, and I hope it's a long term success, but you really do have to be careful when using it. Depending on the topic you may get a very thorough, fair, and objective treatment of the subject matter, or you may get something very different. I certainly hope the Wiki community figures out and implements an effective means of removing/diminishing the hand of those with editorial agendas.

[DesEtoiles]

7. this is what the page says now

Days after the 2004 Presidential election, Diebold agreed to pay $2.6 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the State of California alleging that they had sold poor quality voting equipment.<2>
On September 30, 2004, a judge ruled that Diebold inappropriately threatened copyright violations for webmasters, and their Internet Service Providers, who published or linked to an archive of emails displaying flaws in the company's voting systems. On October 15, 2004, Diebold agreed to pay damages and legal fees of $125,000.
In December 2005, Diebold's CEO Wally O'Dell resigned following reports that the company was facing securities fraud litigation surrounding charges of insider trading. <3>
In May 2006, a registered lobbyist for Diebold Election Systems contributed the individual maximum of $10,000 to the election campaign of Republican Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell - whose office approved Diebold's selection as a vendor and negotiated the price of its machines for county election boards.<4> One month earlier, Blackwell claimed that his purchase of 178 shares of Diebold stock had been the result of an oversight by his financial manager.<5>
In November 2006, Stephen Heller, a former employee of a law firm representing Diebold, pleaded guilty of illegally accessing a computer and making copies of files that allegedly expose irregularities in some of Diebold's electronic voting machines. One of the memos warned Diebold that uncertified software it had installed in machines used by Alameda County violated California election law. Stephen Heller has been called a "quintessential whistleblower" by Michael Kohn, general counsel for the National Whistleblower Center. <6> However, in a statement Heller wrote to Jones Day, "I also regret any disparaging statements suggesting that Jones Day committed any unlawful acts. Upon reflection, I now believe and understand that such statements were unjustified." Heller also paid the company $10,000.
In March 2007, it was reported by the Associated Press that Diebold was considering divesting itself of its voting machine subsidiary because it was "widely seen as tarnishing the company's reputation" <7>.
In August 2007, a data-mining tool developed at Cal Tech to trace IP addresses revealed that Diebold regularly excises negative criticism from its own Wikipedia page<8>.

[kpete]

8. K&R

[babylonsister]

9. K&R; censorship is never good, but I'm not surprised. Good to see

this story out there.

[intheflow]

10. Holy shit! The Exec. Office of the President has modified FEMA's page!

Of course I expected to see that FEMA had edited the page, but they had only edited it 181 times. Compared with over 400 times from the EOP.
:puke:


IP Range
63.161.169.0-255

Name
Fema

Domain
eop.gov

Location
Sioux City, Iowa, United States

# Edits
432

[progressoid]

11. Damn it - Wiki should only allow registered Democrats to edit.

:sarcasm:

[mogster]

12. Check the differences in the Diebold example

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=28623375

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=28623410