[Wikimedia-l] French intelligency agency forces removal of a Wikipedia article

[Matthew Roth]

This is where the discussion is happening on-wiki:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Bulletin_des_administrateurs#Secret_d.C3.A9fense


On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 10:52 AM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> wrote:

> Hard to know what was involved from the information you provide. The
> problem is there is classified information that amounts to nothing and
> then there is classified information release of which can cause serious
> damage. Defiance will eventually result in serious trouble. Not that we
> should knuckle under to nonsense.
>
> Fred
>
> > Hi there,
> > I guess you might be interested to hear that Direction Centrale du
> > Renseignement Intérieur (Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence,
> > DCRI), a French intelligence agency that reports directly to the
> > Ministry of the Interior, has apparently forced a French Wikipedia
> > administrator to delete an article that in their opinion—as I
> > understand it—revelead classified information deemed very harmful to
> > the French national defence ("compromission du secret de la Défense
> > nationale").
> >
> > Interestingly, they contacted the WMF legal team with a request to
> > remove (delete? suppress?) this article a couple of weeks before that,
> > but were refused after failing to provide further information on why
> > the article should be removed (in the words of a Foundation legal
> > counsel).
> >
> > Undounted by that, they approached the said administrator — who
> > operates under his real name, so I guess it was pretty easy to track
> > him — and asked him to delete this article, a request which he
> > obliged. (The article has since been restored by a different
> > administrator). As far as I understand, the version of the article
> > they wanted to have deleted was
> > <https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=81104004>.
> >
> > I guess that when an intelligence agency asks their citizen to remove
> > information from Wikipedia citing the penal code (article 413-11 of
> > the French penal code in this case), it is something worth sharing (no
> > harm intended).
> >
> > Further reading in English:
> > * <https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=91703508>
> > * <https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=91705235>
> >
> > --
> > Tomasz W. Kozłowski
> > a.k.a. [[user:odder]]
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
>
>
>
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-- 

Matthew Roth
Global Communications Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
+1.415.839.6885 ext 6635
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