No subject

http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2007/03/the_wikipedia_factor_in_us_int.html

March 21, 2007

The Wikipedia Factor in U.S. Intelligence

The collaboratively written online encyclopedia Wikipedia, created in
2001, has steadily grown in popularity, credibility and influence to
the point that it is now used and referenced in U.S. Government
intelligence products.

A March 19 profile of Indian Congress Party Leader Rahul Gandhi
prepared by the Open Source Center (OSC) of the Office of Director of
National Intelligence is explicitly derived from "various internet
sources including wikipedia.org." A March 21 OSC profile of Rajnath
Singh, president of India's Bharatiya Janata Party, is likewise
"sourced from wikipedia.org."

An OSC report last year on the leader of the terrorist group
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Velupillai Prabhakaran, noted that
he and his wife "have two children, a girl and a boy. According to
wikipedia.com, the boy is named Charles Anthony and the girl,
Duwaraha."

The relatively new attentiveness of U.S. intelligence agencies to
Wikipedia and other unorthodox sources (including fas.org) seems like
a healthy development. Of course, like any source and moreso than
some, Wikipedia cannot be used uncritically.

Last December, according to another OSC report, a participant in an
online jihadist forum posted a message entitled "Why Don't We Invade
Wikipedia?" in which "he called on other participants to consider
writing articles and adding items to the online Wikipedia
encyclopedia.... and in this way, and through an Islamic lobby, apply
pressure on the encyclopedia's material."

For various topics related to space physics, "Wikipedia was the most
complete source of information" compared to other highly ranked web
sites, according to an article in the American Geophysical Union's Eos
magazine (13 March 07) by Mark B. Moldwin, et al. But some Wikipedia
entries on space physics, the authors found, also contained mistaken
use of terminology, factual errors and omissions.

"Wikipedia lets anyone write or edit it, which of course makes it
vulnerable to vandalism--as when a picture of the evil Emperor
Palpatine from Star Wars briefly adorned the entry for the new Pope
[Benedict]," notes Eric Rauchway in The New Republic Online (March
21).