Google AI: US Intel's Wikipedia Editing Activities
Q.- Does US intel moderate Wikipedia entries? A.- U.S. intelligence agencies do not officially moderate Wikipedia entries, as the platform is managed by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation and a decentralized global community of volunteer editors. However, there is extensive documented evidence that personnel within agencies like the CIA and FBI have actively edited Wikipedia articles. The primary distinction is between official moderation (having administrative control over what stays on the site) and editing (altering pages anonymously like standard users). Tracing Government Edits The most concrete evidence of intelligence community involvement came to light through WikiScanner, a data-tracking tool developed by researcher Virgil Griffith. By cross-referencing anonymous Wikipedia revisions with the public IP address blocks owned by corporations and government offices, the tool revealed several targeted interventions: • The CIA: Computers registered to the Central Intelligence Agency ...