2009/1/25 Aryeh Gregor Simetrical+wikilist@gmail.com:
On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 10:27 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
I wouldn't bet on that
No offense intended, but I'm curious: do you do any software development?
No. But we know that accidental security issues slip through. Betting you can beat the NSA's ability to hide deliberate flaws is not the safest of options. That said I doubt they would take the risk.
Personally I would see no problem with any degree of association between Wikimedia and the CIA, as long as it didn't compromise transparency or anything. Then again, I'm a neocon and have no objections to the CIA whatsoever. I'm not sure if the CIA was meant to be an example of an indisputably evil organization, because it doesn't work for me.
The CIA were meant as an example of an organisation who used mediawiki on a large scale that some people would be less than happy having dealings with.
We know that various governments are looking to influence wikipedia content (heh we've also been told that there is at least one article in wikipedia that one bit of the CIA thinks another bit of the CIA shouldn't know about). For the moment I have no reason to believe any of these attempts go beyond normal PR methods (oh with the exception of part of the US government dealing with illegal drugs but I don't think they realised what they were doing). We would like it to stay that way. It is understandable that people would be concerned if an organisation with influencing non US opinion as one of it's goals started getting too close to the WMF.
However this hasn't happened so not too many worries.