MSNBC Blocking Searches for "Wikileaks" | Hacker News Reader

MSNBC Blocking Searches for "Wikileaks"

msnbc.msn.com

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The gun camera video doesn't seem to have been picked up by any mainstream US news outlets, at least, not that show up on Google News. It's on the BBC's front page. This seems odd to me.

http://huffingtonpost.com has it in bold red letters on their front page. That's the most mainstream place I've seen it.

i'd hardly call huffington post 'mainstream' ;) not when FOX News has a huge lead on all other mainstream news outlets in the US.

New York Times has it, though CNN doesn't. There is another more recent military abuse scandal breaking today that is overshadowing this one at least as far as I can tell.

Im not surprised it's on the BBC to be honest; they are usually quite good at picking up on news like this.

In actual fact their article seems either rushed or ass covering. There are many "they say" and "appears" in the article.

As a big fan of the BBC and with greatest respect to their journalism - it is ass covering.

The reason is that so long as they only report fact they're quite safe. So when they say

a voice says: The transmissions says of one of the individuals: "He's got an RPG [rocket-propelled grenade]. I'm going to fire.

Then they can't be said to be inaccurate - the video does indeed include someone saying those words. The article just leaves it to the reader to decide upon its accuracy - a very safe option.

That said this video doesn't really need a 'report' so much as a pointer to its location. It speaks for itself - chilled me to the bone.

There's a number of reasons why that video hasn't, and probably won't, appear on mainstream news (for what it is worth, I use to work for BBC News Website in a technical capacity):

Firstly, most mainstream news websites have rules and policies on showing videos coming from unknown and unvarifieable sources - especially war. The concern is that videos can be edited and doctored to make them appear to construe something else that doesn't represent the true facts.

I'm not saying this video is doctored/edited in this way, but it's a blanket policy most news orgs will keep to. Instead they will report that WikiLeaks have this video and link to them instead. Which is what is happening here.

There is a second, and somewhat sad issue here too. That video remains property and copyright of the US military, which means news organizations probably wouldn't want to redistribute it anyway as they don't have permission. News orgs have been known to republish photos and videos they don't own when there is extra-ordinary reasons but I don't know if this is enough to warrant that.

As an aside, I'm also concerned that it could get pulled from YouTube if the US military issue a DMCA notice or similar request due to national security.

All government video/pictures etc are public domain.

Exactly. The US Military cannot hold copyright. They could classify it, but that's about it.

Really? I'm not trying to be facetious: Can anybody roll up to the military and ask for arbitrary gun camera footage?

If they get it, it's not protected by copyright. That's it.

Do you have a source for this piece of information? I'm led to believe it is the other way around, anything obtained illegally doesn't automatically become public domain - but I don't have an internet based source to link to at the moment.

Public domain is just its copyright status. The legality/illegality of publishing or disseminating it is a separate unrelated issue.

Everything created by the USFG is automatically public domain, but just because something is public domain doesn't mean it can circulate freely in public.

See the Pentagon Papers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers

Even stolen information cannot be enjoined from publication by the government.

Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification.

It's more murkey than that. As I understand it, all video that is released by the govenment and army is public domain -- but it is not clear exactly how this video was obtained.

In the website they say that they made a freedom of information request but later say they had to decrypt the video.

That seems to suggest that the video was not released to them under the freedom of information request and instead an encrypted original was obtained by other means not explained.

I doubt any video of recent active combat is going to be declassified and thus available under a FOIR, and if you obtain something illegally/unofficially that doesn't suddenly make it public domain.

(to be clear, I'm glad this video is out there - it is an important story being told. But IMHO the distribution status of the video is a reasonable discussion topic none the less)

Are leaks of classified info usually prosecuted under copyright laws? It seems that they would apply something more severe or specific. It is my understanding that all works of the US gov. are public domain and classified content is protected under secrecy laws, not copyright laws.

If they are released, even accidentally, or stolen, they cannot be enjoined. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers

Just a small nitpick, it's not FOIR it's FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act)

FOIR works as well, referring specifically to the request (Freedom of Information Request).

Can the U.S. assert copyright? I thought all work product of the Federal Government was in the public domain (e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_work_by_the...)

Here's a WaPo story from 6 months ago on exactly this story:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09...

The leak of the video is newsworthy and it will inevitably get picked up, but Wikileaks didn't document an event that anybody didn't already know about. Reuters saw the video in 2007 (and was unfortunately not allowed to copy it).

I've taken flames for saying so in the past, but it bears repeating: Having a publicly funded news source in your country that is required by its very charter not to pander to political or corporate interests is utterly invaluable, despite its inevitable shortcomings.

That may be because it isn't really news, other than the leak of the video. Reuters saw this video in 2007, and had been openly pushing for an investigation ever since.

posted 17 minutes ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/world/middleeast/06baghdad...

It's currently the #2 story on Google News.

It's been on the front of the Fox News website for a few hours now:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/04/05/video-appears-for...

Edit: URL

Remove your tin foil hats, while MSNBC's search sucks they still have a mention of it that was linked from the front page.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/04/05/4117730-wik...

Also NYTimes has one: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/05/us/politics/AP-US...

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/109063/screenshots/us_civil_forces_m...

This is the front page of MSNBC. You can't possibly justify their search function not presenting results when the blurb provides marginal insight into how severe this video is.

Redditors/Wikileaks is making a big stink about it, but it really isn't about being righteous. Its about making a big stink.

Every army fighting a war against an insurgency makes mistakes like this. If you are saying that the rules of engagement are flawed it might be eye-opening to realize the reduction of military casualties by having a more aggressive set of rules. The only solution in my mind is to not go to war from the beginning and to end it as soon as possible with the best means possible.

Tin foil hats?

/?q=wikileak works, /?q=wikileaks returns an error. It's a politically sensitive topic involving the death of two press employees, possibly unethical conduct by the military, and the government has attempted to suppress its release. What more do you want?

It seems pretty obvious to me that their search dept is trying to stop people from finding the story. Either that or their search is broken in a truly bad way--given that those words should stem to the same query, it's suggestive to say the least.

[edit] Looks like their article search is working again.

[edit] You know what? I'm sorry, that was premature. It is suggestive, but there are other plausible (and, to my mind, preferable) explanations. "wikileak" returns web results, whereas "wikileaks" returns article results. MSNBC may have a local index for their stories and a fallback to Bing. Perhaps it's a failure for a newly-emerging search term that only applies to the local index, which does not stem queries. Or perhaps they're doing extra processing for stories which failed, for any number of reasons.

Just think about it this way. How many people using msnbc will actually make the query that will match the regex "/^wikileaks$/i". If they were truly trying to prevent people from accessing information about it they would have done a better regex.

"It seems pretty obvious to me that their search dept is trying to stop people from finding the story. Either that or their search is broken in a truly bad way--given that those words should stem to the same query, it's suggestive to say the least."

It really doesn't. I'm going to take a big guess here and say that the good people over at MSNBC are not that inept.

My guess is they're not doing regexes. Someone in charge probably said "Stop people from searching for wikileaks" and they added that term to a hacked-together blocklist ASAP. Either that or they added it to a special list of queries that get extra processing (topic summary for the top of results, perhaps) which was crashing, and deployed without checking the results. Either way, it looks like their search is working now although the error persists, which suggests things over at MSNBC are much in flux. :)

My guess is: There is a list of searchterms which now looks like that: 1. Wikileaks 2. Obama 3. Sex 4. Reef 5. Oil . . . 32. wikileak

There is probably a simple "ban this word" textbutton and the person in charge will naturally just ban wikileaks.

Another interesting thing: on Facebook I have a fake account that I use to check how my account appears to other people. Statuses and links I've posted to collateralmurder.com keep disappearing from other peoples' displays.

That's interesting, but I'm not seeing the same thing...

I have two accounts, one that I signed up for my freshman year and another that I signed up for when I transferred schools. I haven't signed into the former in about 4 years but just did so and saw the story that I had posted this morning from my other account.

Not saying you're wrong, just that I'm getting different results.

They seem to have been restored. There was, however, definitely a window of time when they were ghost deleted.

I tried it just now and it worked so I'm guessing there was a mistake on your end.

I have a number of fake accounts for work; just checked and they seem to be appearing for all of them ok.

Side note: You don't need another account to do that. You can go to your privacy settings and click "Preview Profile". For example, this link will let your see your profile as me:

http://www.facebook.com/USERNAME?viewas=100000686899395

You can type a friend's name into that box there. Also somewhere in the privacy options is the ability to see your profile as someone who isn't logged in, etc.

I think the point was that it might be similar to Reddit's "ninja ban" whereby for you, it seems as if everything is working, but in reality, you are the only person who can see your content.

It might matter how recently you posted them. I don't know exactly how facebook works but I'm assuming they have multiple servers that changes have to get synced to. Sometimes it can take 30 minutes after I post something before it will reliably show up. You can refresh once and see it, refresh again and it will be gone.

Facebook decides what stories are "most interesting" to you, and displays those. If your fake account is low-activity, it might be culling entries just as a result of that algorithm.

"wikileaks video" works. Malice, incompetence, etc?

CNN is also deleting submitted stories about the wikileaks video from their website. http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/bmr9w/reddit_i_sub... | http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-429272 | http://i.imgur.com/QE5w5.png

I would bet that "wikileaks video" will not work soon, too.

You're right. "wikileaks video" now returns an error.

3rd possibility: malice, incompetently implemented...

Bizarre. "Wikileak" works and brings up wikileaks.org as the first hit.

not anymore

That is the first result I get.

Yet Bing works: http://www.bing.com/search?q=wikileaks

Searching for "Wikileaks" on MSNBC yields this error: "We are unable to display search results at this time. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience and try your request again."

Searching for "Tiger Woods" yields the results you'd expect.

Though oddly enough, it still returns the story despite the error message.

Earlier this afternoon, MSNBC aired a 10 minute segment on the video. It seems unlikely this was intentionally censored.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31510813/#36182090

GE (a massive player in the military industry) is a major stakeholder in MSNBC/NBC. They make a lot of the parts that go in the helicopters involved in this latest video.

I think this one can be filed squarely under "malice."

Edit: updated for accuracy.

That is incorrect. MSNBC is owned by NBC Universal which Comcast bought a 51% stake in the company to GE's 49%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_Universal

Having a "major stake" doesn't necessarily imply that it owns the majority. You wouldn't call 49% a major stake in NBC?

the comment in question was edited to say "major stake" instead of "owned by" after my correction. Thanks!

If I remember correctly the deal is still being reviewed before it actually happens (but it will be soon). The wikipedia article also says the current owners are Vivendi and GE still.

No. That is not evidence of a conspiracy.

How does that 'malice' square with this: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31510813/#36182090

This story can be killed now; the video is now the center picture/video headline on CNN.com. Apparently the mainstream media was waiting for confirmation that the video was real.

This just came out, so it may have been that the mainstream media didn't want to report until the authenticity of the video was confirmed by an independent source. http://twitter.com/BreakingNews/status/11660278998 See if the news stories start showing up in a few hours before calling conspiracy.

And yet: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34149853/

It is worth noting that NBC was until a few months ago wholly owned by General Electric, who are of course a major supplier of hardware and services to the US military.

GE don't put much info about their military work on their corporate front page, but if you search their subsidary sites you'll see that they supply everything from fighter aircraft engines through to IT systems (um, perhaps even video encoding and encryptions systems).

http://www.ge-ip.com/industries/mil-aero

Comcast bought a controlling stake in the company last year, but GE remains a significant shareholder. (See http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/03/news/companies/comcast_nbc/i...)

The search is working again, and MSNBC has an official article available.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36182383/ns/world_news-mideastn_...

It's only partially working at this time. It seems to return "articles" but nothing else.

Did you even look at the results page when you try the search? It in fact gives the search results. Yes, there is a spurious error message at the top, but the results are there.

It seems to be inconsistent across all MSNB properties. I found this segment (through bing search) of show that runs on MSNB in which the wikileaks video is discussed: http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/video-u-s-troops-shoo...

I'd propose the theory that a plausible explanation is that when the domain becomes unreachable/times out the search engine removes it from search results.

Someone might have made a design decision that says that domains that cannot be reached are not shown to customers in their results.

Except that they're blocking searches for "wikileaks", not results for "wikileaks.org".

I think all we know is that the search is failing to produce results.

I also tried "collateralmurder" and "collateralmurder.com" and both fail to give any web results and indicate no warning banner.

Both results do link to MSNBC's own stories which cite the links.

You may very well be correct that the cause of the result was deliberate blocking. I was simply trying to suggest that their might be some automated error prevention heuristic at work that was potentially a cause of the same effect.

The main Bing search works, if what your saying is correct then since MSNBC's search is just a modified version of Bing, Bing would also need to have the problem for there to be no fault on MSNBC's end.

That seems reasonable, though if MSNBC did tracking of people clicking through and their success rate it could still be true. I have no idea if that is common practice or not though.

When I try out wikileaks I get the message "We are unable to display search results at this time. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience and try your request again." It doesn't describe what effect the error has though. It seems to just display results inside MSNBC and not results on the web at large.

Also worth noting: I viewed the video on YouTube this morning (6 hours ago aprox.) and the View counter has not changes from 359 in all that time.

I see more comments so I do not believe this is a browser cache issue.

Or maybe YouTube doesn't update that value on the fly? Anyone know more?

YouTube is always slow updating its view counter (certainly several hours if not a day behind). Completely normal, but certainly already started more than one conspiracy theory :)

Trying to post the YouTube video to Facebook allowed for the link but none of the usual meta data or embedded video.

That occasionally breaks. I've had problems with it today on an innocuous site.

Just saw Wolf talking about in CNN about 30 minutes ago.

posted this to my social network, definitely looks like malice.

It's working now.

bing sucks.

It works perfectly fine for me guys. I'm not sure what you are talking about.

I just tried it, it doesn't work for me either. 'Wikileak' works, but not 'wikileaks'.

ah your right I put in additional words. That is weird though since its only for the embedded bing search.

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