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CIA and FBI being naughty on Wikipedia

The Government is watching you. Maybe not all the time, but enough. Waiting for you to do something you're not supposed to. That's what makes it all the more sweet when someone develops a way to catch the Government doing something wrong, no matter how small it is. A few days ago we told you about a fun little tool called WikiScanner that lets you search for companies making anonymous changes to Wikipedia entries. And lo and behold, both CIA and FBI networks have been spotted editing entries. Which wouldn't be a big deal, if they were editing entries about club sandwiches or something else irrelevant to government activities. Then it would just be a waste of time. But they've been adding and changing information on things like Guantanamo Bay and a former CIA Chief.

Now, Wikipedia has some clearly stated conflict-of-interest guidelines that say that you shouldn't be writing about a topic if you're a tad biased. Which in this case, the editors clearly are. The FBI has yet to comment on this, and a CIA spokesperson said that he couldn't confirm that their computers were used to make the changes. Granted, it's nowhere near a big deal, but it's kind of funny. The bigger question is: shouldn't the CIA and FBI have better things to do with their time than edit Wikipedia entries? Guess not.

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