[Air-L] Canadian general warns that Wikipedia postings may be aiding the Taliban

[Muzammil Hussain]

Sounds very much like the WW2 "loose lips sink ships" dramatization. I would
imagine that the blogsphere (due to it's 'collaborative' and 'public-access'
features) would also be high up on Brig.Gen Atkinson's list of websites. I
think the military has been very successful monitoring and censoring
soldier's contributions to their private blogs. However, I don't know how
concerned (and held responsible) the civilian public should be about
contributing to either blogs or wikis.

To better problematize the potentially dangerous use of Web content, looking
at it as an issue information-source/flow would be better. If the
government/military is concerned about sensitive information being leaked
through blogs and wikis, get to it at the source -- whether it's being taken
from soldiers' blogs, flikr sites, or if journalists on the field covering
war are giving out too much information, etc.

But, if the public is only aggregating content that is already and
rightfully public, I don't think it should be censored at all. The potential
contributions of wikis and blogs to inform and fuel discourse is vital for
today's networked public -- particularly about issues such as the 'War on
Terror'.


Muzammil Hussain
mmhussain at wisc.edu
School of Journalism and Mass Communication
University of Wisconsin-Madison




On Feb 15, 2008 7:19 PM, Barry Wellman <wellman at chass.utoronto.ca> wrote:

> >From the Toronto Star, February 15, 2008. (I am not making this up).
> Allan Woods, "Military Issues Web Warning"
>
> "Brig.-Gen Peter Atkinson... warned that seemingly innocuous photos,
> videos and news reports can be the source for as much as 80% of the
> intelligence that insurgents routinely gather on operations....
>
> "Wikipedia is among the most dangerous of the public-access websites, he
> said.... 'Due to its collaborative content contribution, anybody can add
> to the content, providing a compilation of details on a specific incident,
> like the descriptions of a casualty, photos, locations, and news articles
> contributed by several sources,' Atkinson told reporters."
>
> BW: To check this out, I searched on Canadian, Taliban and 2008, and found
> nothing currently revelatory, even in the article, "War in Afghanistan
> (2001-present)".
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_%282001%E2%80%93present%29
>
> I do not have the time, inclination or resources to search the history of
> every article to see who revealed what, when, where, why, or how.
>
> As an influential essay on Wikipedia says, "Wikipedia is not a newspaper."
> Therefore, I wonder if there will be much operational reporting on it that
> lasts more than a short while.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_not_a_newspaper
>
> YMMV.
>
>  Barry Wellman
>  _______________________________________________________________________
>
>  S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC              NetLab Director
>  Centre for Urban & Community Studies           University of Toronto
>  455 Spadina Avenue          Room 418          Toronto Canada M5S 2G8
>  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman<http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/%7Ewellman>           fax:+1-416-978-7162
>  Updating history:     http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
>         Elvis wouldn't be singing "Return to Sender" these days
>  _______________________________________________________________________
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/
>