Wikipedia page of US whistleblower edited from US Senate IP address
Posted by: Jon Ben-Mayor on 08/06/2013 02:09 PM
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It seems as though someone in the US Senate decided that it was their duty to make a tiny little change to Wikipedia's description of the US whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The word change only stayed on the Snowden page for around one minute, but it still managed to create quite a stir.
On a discussion page for the entry, one Wikipedia editor confirmed that the change was made by someone with access to a Senate computer.
“The edit was made by this IP and the IP does belong to the US Senate. The edit was reverted within 1 minute due to the fact that it does not reflect a neutral point of view which is one of the Five Pillars that governs how Wikipedia operates. In that way, Wikipedia not only performed as it should but it did so incredibly quickly,” the post reads.
Nailing the perpetrator responsible for that single edit will likely be task all too impossible, though. While the IP address behind the change is indeed registered to the Senate, it isn’t restricted to one particular user.
“If the agency or facility uses proxy servers, this IP address may represent many users at many personal computers or devices,” the discussion page acknowledges.
Should someone want to do some serious digging, though, determining who made the change might not be all too impossible. As Klock pointed out, though, that same Senate IP address has logged onto Wikipedia a handful of times during the last few weeks to make other revisions, including edits on the page of the novel Five People You Meet in Heaven and another for a tiki bar located inside a San Francisco hotel.
I am sure that this just solidifies Mr. Snowden's position that it would be next to impossible to receive a fair trial within the US.
The word change only stayed on the Snowden page for around one minute, but it still managed to create quite a stir.
On a discussion page for the entry, one Wikipedia editor confirmed that the change was made by someone with access to a Senate computer.
“The edit was made by this IP and the IP does belong to the US Senate. The edit was reverted within 1 minute due to the fact that it does not reflect a neutral point of view which is one of the Five Pillars that governs how Wikipedia operates. In that way, Wikipedia not only performed as it should but it did so incredibly quickly,” the post reads.
Nailing the perpetrator responsible for that single edit will likely be task all too impossible, though. While the IP address behind the change is indeed registered to the Senate, it isn’t restricted to one particular user.
“If the agency or facility uses proxy servers, this IP address may represent many users at many personal computers or devices,” the discussion page acknowledges.
Should someone want to do some serious digging, though, determining who made the change might not be all too impossible. As Klock pointed out, though, that same Senate IP address has logged onto Wikipedia a handful of times during the last few weeks to make other revisions, including edits on the page of the novel Five People You Meet in Heaven and another for a tiki bar located inside a San Francisco hotel.
I am sure that this just solidifies Mr. Snowden's position that it would be next to impossible to receive a fair trial within the US.
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