PM rewrites wiki and possibly ABC News

Posted Fri Aug 24, 2007 11:25am at ABC News

PM not behind Wikipedia edits

The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet says Prime Minister John Howard did not ask any of his staff to edit online public encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Staff from the department have been found to have made edits to Wikipedia entries on topics such as the "children overboard" affair.

Treasurer Peter Costello's page was also edited, removing a reference to the nickname "Captain Smirk".

The Defence Department has blocked staff from editing the open access encyclopedia, amid revelations they had made more than 5,000 changes.

An internal inquiry has been launched but the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet says the changes could have come from a number of different organisations using the same internet protocol address.

Posted about 7 hours later at ABC News

PM's Dept denies making Wikipedia changes

The head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet says changes to the internet encyclopedia Wikipedia were not made by anyone in his department or the Prime Minister's office.

A new tracking program has revealed what appeared to be more than 100 changes to the online encyclopedia by internet protocol addresses from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Topics edited included mandatory detention and the children overboard affair, leading to criticism about how public servants were being employed.

But the head of the department, Dr Peter Shergold, says the changes were not made by his staff.

He says the network address appearing next to the changes is that of another customer on the same internet service provider.

I’d like Dr Peter to explain that one in more detail, who is this other customer that shares the dpmc.gov.au network address? PM Magoo is not the only online inquisitor about though; the CIA and Vatican also invest much effort rewriting history.

Also from ABC News

Program shows CIA behind Wikipedia entries

The world according to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia is in a constant state of update, as tens of thousands of contributors work to ensure the site's content is correct.

A new identification program on the site reveals that some of the most prolific contributors to Wikipedia are the CIA, the British Labour Party and the Vatican - and they are not just updating their own entries.

Seamus Byrne is the editor of online technology site Gizmodo Australia.

He says Wikipedia is just one place where government agencies are watching people.

"Obviously there's the quite large - and people in online circles certainly know about it - Echelon Project," he said.

"It's a series of surveillance systems around the world that actually monitor phone, data, all kinds of traffic that goes on, looking for keywords related to things like terrorism and all kinds of troublesome issues and they pull that out and try to sift through it to find any connections that could be made to point to a real problem."

Echelon Project - space.com

Echelon Project - fas.org

Echelon Project - jya.com