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Comment by ErrantX | Hacker News Reader

Wikimedia France just published an article (in English) with more details: http://blog.wikimedia.fr/dcri-threat-a-sysop-to-delete-a-wik...

What's distressing about this is that they found a French Wikipedia sysop who they could identify in real life and "summoned" him to their offices (I presume from the language it was a summons he couldn't refuse). Then forced him to delete it there and then, despite no prior connection to the article, or else be detained.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of them wanting to delete the article, or whether it had super-secret information, there is only really one response to what they did; What. The. Fuck.

The precedent they are setting is something like "if you are involved in a website where someone else does something we consider problematic, you could be in trouble. If we feel like it".

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> (I presume from the language it was a summons he couldn't refuse)

From the article (thanks for linking it btw, it has slightly more info than the English text in the OP):

"This volunteer had no link with that article, having never edited it and not even knowing of its existence before entering the DCRI offices."

So I'm guessing he complied with the summons because he didn't know what it was about and therefore saw no reason not to.

There's some comments below the article you linked, criticizing the sysop for not refusing to delete the article, calling it an abuse of his powers. Well. I don't know who this sysop is, but if he's just an average Jacques, never having had to deal with strong-arming by intelligence agencies, I can totally understand why he chose that course of action. After all, you can always undelete an article, and right then, at that moment, things must have seemed pretty scary to him. From the (English part of the) OP, it states that he tried to talk them out of it, that despite his role as a sysop it was not his decision to make, point them to the Wikimedia Foundation, etc. Who knows what they threatened him with (probably jailtime), I can't blame him for not risking that, or at least not risking it until he gets a clearer picture.

He probably thought, let's get myself out of this first, and let the inevitable publicity shitstorm sort things out later. And indeed, apparently the article is back up.

> I'm guessing he complied with the summons because he didnt know what it was about and therefor saw no reason not to.

I'm not sure if this is a cultural difference between France and the states or if I'm overly paranoid, but if I were to receive a summons of any type by any government agency with more authority than the dept. of motor vehicles, there is precisely nothing that would get me to comply with that summons without talking to my lawyer first.

Thinking about it tripzilch could well be right about what happened.

Speaking for myself; if MI5 (to pick an example) contacted me as a public and relatively high profile UK editor/sysop and asked me to come in and, say, advise them I probably would.

I keep forgetting we are reading a lot of translated text here; so "summons" might not be the right word in this context. I perhaps jumped to conclusions given the stuff that happened once he'd attended the meeting :)

The translation is being improved by lots of people, and a revised version should be up shortly.

The word used in the French version is "convoquer", which is the same word used for "draft" in the military sense. I think it has a strong connotation of obligation, i.e. you can't refuse it.

He was theoretically free during the questionning, and free to not comply with the demand — theoretically.

The OP writes that he was threatened to be held in custody (French: "garde à vue"). This is a common trick of the French police: when people are held in custody, they have the right to an attorney and to keep silent, which the police don't like. So the police question "free" people and threaten them to hold them in custody if they don't cooperate obediently. Most people (especially good citizens) are scared of being held in custody, so the trick works quite well: people answer every single question and have no attorney, despite their right (and interest) to do otherwise.

In the present case, the charges (had any been pressed — he was there as a free person) would have been akin to terrorism, which means that the custody would have been under anti-terrorism rules: a very unpleasant experience that can last up to 96 hours. So the pressure was very high, despite his being "free".

Given the French propensity to strike it would have been interesting to see the public's reaction had he been held on anti-terrorism laws when it's clear to all he's an innocent person and there seems little evidence of any imminent threat to justify excessive means.

He did the right thing at minimal cost, considered how the story backfires on the "intelligence" agency. In a way I hope that the careers of the people involved in this incident are on the line now. The DCRI has a reputation to hold.

I understand. I'm not American, but if I was (or even if I wasn't), if a similar US agency would "summon" me, I'd be scared as hell. And in that situation I'd think "let me talk to a lawyer first" a lot sooner than I would here (even though it might be smart here, too).

ErrantX also brings up a good point about translation, "summon" could mean something as simple as a phonecall asking for a meeting, without any implication that one may be in trouble. Probably not something one would expect to find themselves being threatened with jailtime.

If you weren't an American, sometimes even if you are, and American Intelligence is interested in you...

I doubt you'd need to worry about receiving a summons.

Was that a drone strike reference?

Don't see why it would be, considering the US has already droned down one American citizen, and that the president says he will reserve the right to do it again (on purpose next time).

Two, that we know about--Anwar Al-Awlaki and his son.

Not everyone can afford a lawyer.

That is, of course, true. Were I unable to afford a lawyer, I would politely decline the request. If I could't afford an attorney, I feel like I couldn't afford to get mixed up in something like this either.

maybe, but then you haven't been subjected to a laundry list of treason charges and the 36 life sentences you could be facing. You are sitting at a comfortable desk, at home, and maybe sipping Pepsi or whatever :)

Pressure works differently on different people and those in alphabet agencies know what buttons to press.

....maybe they'll leave me alone, if I just talk to them. No need for lawyers (OMG I don't even have the rent money this month!) and no uncertainties over life in prison. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

Americans distrust their governments far more than Europeans. Sometimes it keeps us from having nice things (like a sensible health care system), but sometimes there are benefits to this mindset.

How about if they sent you a National Security letter, in which case it would be illegal to talk to your lawyer first?

I would still see a lawyer, though I would neglect to tell people that I did that if the letter turned out to be real.

How could I possibly justify not contacting a lawyer? I'm not qualified to read such a letter in the first place!

What you say is the best, safest, right thing to do.

It's not what very many at all in the U.S. do though -- even those who think in the abstract that they wouldn't talk to the authorities without taking to a lawyer first (or at all) -- end up doing so. In part because the authorities are pretty expert at getting you to talk to them (by intimidation or persuasion).

But the more you think about it in advance and prepare, the more likely you can remember to exersize your rights.

I can't say for France, but in the U.S., remember NOT, ever, to talk to the authorities without talking to a lawyer first. It's really hardly ever going to make things better for you or your friends and loved ones. Don't talk to the cops.

He's on the board of Wikimedia France, so dealing with the government is part of what they do.

(WMFR has no control over Wikipedia content or servers.)

Though this incident rather puts the lie to that.

"WMFR has no control over Wikipedia servers, and no more control over Wikipedia content than any other volunteer editor."

Fixed that for the GP.

David means as a legal entity. It's basically the standard refrain for any Wikimedia chapter :)

If the chapter, as an entity, tried to "interfere" in one of the Wikis it would go down very badly within the community. There is a certain amount of push and shove that means chapters are extremely careful to be seen only ever as facilitating.

But that's a whole rabbit hole of politics beyond the scope of this discussion :D

As far as I'm concerned, that's not the distressing part.

Once the authorities concluded a crime was being committed by organisation X, they found someone involved with that organisation and forced them to stop.

They clearly correctly identified that person as a) being a member, and b) having the means to delete the article.

That's not a new precedent, that's perfectly normal. The only real issue is the ridiculous attempt to make the information "disappear" in the first place.

If a crime was involved, it could be understandable - but what crime is there?

This is public, non-secret information hosted outside of France by a non-French organization.

If a Boeing sysadming goes to France on vacation, can they ask him to delete stuff out of Boeing servers?

The funny thing here is that deleting an article on Wikipedia is more akin to hiding its contents from the public (i.e. non-sysop users) than it is to deletion. No history or content is actually lost, and as we're all aware nothing ever truly disappears on the internet. Ironically, if they wanted sensitive information gone for good, they would have to use the "oversight" feature, which requires the Foundation's blessing.

> they would have to use the "oversight" feature, which requires the Foundation's blessing.

Oversighting is a community process too; most Wikis elect or appoint a small group of editors to have access to the tool.

" It receives hundreds of requests for deletions of articles every year, and cooperates with requests when those are clearly motivated."

It only receives hundreds? Something is wrong with sentence.

As I read the sentence, it means hundreds of requests... from public authorities.

I think that's an overestimate. As a volunteer on the Wikimedia email ticket system (where most such requests, and indeed I believe this example as well, go to) I've only seen a few such requests from public bodies.

EDIT: actually, it seems this did go through the (employed) WMF legal team, rather than the volunteer support service. Sorry :)

The precedent seems to be more along the lines of, "If you are an administrator of a website hosting (what we claim to be) illegal content, you are obliged to delete it upon being informed".

Well, perhaps. Although I'd suggest that dragging him into their offices and threatening to not let him leave till he obliges is a step beyond that :)

Illegal status of material should be adjudicated by a court of law, not by a civil servant in a covert agency.

It's a 'do the ends justify the means' issue. I'm kind of shocked that the above the fold comments here no one seems to take into account that France is engaged in conflict. As a result, if you have an easy to access well written article, which is exactly what wikis espouse to be that has detailed relevant as deemed by the french gov't military information, It is their decision to determine what was once public to be classified information. As much as I am for supporting rights of individuals and keeping systems in balance, I'm not so much for the establishment of principle to prove a point and set a precedent (which is not how the french law system works by the way) so much as I am for the utilitarian exercising of power when lives are on the line. How selfish must one be to cling to a few pages on principle when others could die for it.

"The precedent they are setting is something like "if you are involved in a website where someone else does something we consider problematic, you could be in trouble. If we feel like it".

The other way goes that: 'If I have time sensitive information due to the changing landscape of warfare, I could get soldiers and civilians killed if I feel like it'

I sadly would trust the gov't on this decision than an individual.

I don't know anything about the secrets involved but it is generally the case with these things that once the horse has left the barn, closing the barn door isn't very effective.

Steps taken after the fact have a lot more to do a desire on the part of the people who failed to keep secrets secure to be seen as doing something, to punish, or to escape embarrassment.

I disagree simply because I feel the obligation for a completely transparent government outweighs the need to wage war. How selfish must one be to insist we wage these conflicts where the deaths of many are a certainty.

The problem with transparency is that there are those who would exploit it. We could all have our passwords publicly available (that would be an interesting experiment), but I'll guess that you wouldn't be willing to post yours here. So I could understand the french gov't not willing to divulge this information at the moment either.

If history has been any lesson, conflict will come, regardless of whether you want it or not.

History also teaches that secrecy is a tool of the powerful state forces to oppress and kill the weak civilians.

History also teaches that secrecy is a tool of those who would like to rebel against powerful state forces that wish to find and kill them.

>>We could all have our passwords publicly available (that would be an interesting experiment), but I'll guess that you wouldn't be willing to post yours here.

Come off it. Hyperbole much? Why don't you take it even a bit further and in the name of transparency have everybody walk around nude so that you know, we can see that you are not carrying any weapons.

You know the comment you replied to did not talk about transparency to this extreme.

It did talk of "obligation for a completely transparent government" (emphasis mine).

Maximally might have been a better word choice, or just dropping the adjective. Absolutism never survives scrutiny⸮

The problem with pacifism is that it gives you no defense against those who aren't pacifists.

No one is invading France.

Nor is France especially pacifistic. I suspect these two facts are somehow related.

Therefore, we should preemptively invade Mali/Iraq/etc? Do we have to strike first, and violently manage other countries just to maintain our defenses?

I am not arguing for pacifism. I put the 'need to wage war' into the original moral calculus as a valid consideration, not to dismiss it.

Deliberately making yourself ineffective at waging war because you don't want to wage war is equivalent to pacifism. There's no value to going out of your way to start wars, but you need the ability to end them decisively.

Well, I'm not really advancing an opinion as to whether the article is a problem or not. But looked at it, it is a fairly mundane description of a radio station right in the heart of France. I struggle to see how any interpretation of the content could be a direct threat to soldier or civilian lives... so your rhetoric there doesn't sit comfortably.

I for one think that the following, "ends justifies the means", approach is not acceptable; "Trust us, we're the government and though it looks innocuous it is threatening lives right now. So we will take any measures to remove it". If it is that much of a risk I feel they should be able to convince someone of that fact without divulging the exact problem.

Through all of this the intelligence agency have apparently failed to communicate this sort of urgency, in private, to either a trained lawyer or the sysop in question. Indeed, the legal team quite clearly suggest they made no effort to convince them of such an urgency.

In either case, had they done so, then both would have been able to explain how to quietly remove the article without this sort of Streisand effect...

All of which still does not excuse the fact that they threatened a private citizen with terrorism charges.

> I sadly would trust the gov't on this decision than an individual.

I feel that what is often forgotten about govt. is that they are made up of individuals. What you are actually arguing here is that of the several individuals involved, some of them presumably have more information (i.e. secret govt. information) than the others.

> Well, I'm not really advancing an opinion as to whether the article is a problem or not. But looked at it, it is a fairly mundane description of a radio station right in the heart of France. I struggle to see how any interpretation of the content could be a direct threat to soldier or civilian lives... so your rhetoric there doesn't sit comfortably.

Yeah, and I'm not really condoning the French govt actions, nor do I really want to defend them, but there was one thing I wondered reading about this incident. The intelligence agency obviously didn't want to tell the Wikimedia Foundation which part(s) of the WP article were sensitive, because doing so would also divulge sensitive information, namely hints of what could have been so sensitive about this article in the first place. This obviously put them in a tight spot as well.

I still don't think it's OK how they handled these matters, but having no idea what it is/was they actually wanted to hide, I can't really say what they should have done instead, either. It's probably really complicated. Having a "secret wikimedia council" who can be trusted with sensitive info, would also need to have power to delete content from WP without having to explain why, and that sounds like a really really bad idea as well.

Well apparently it was a military installation, not just a radio station, and even if it was in the heart of France that doesn't negate the risk as we know targets, civilian and military have been hit on a nation's home soil before. As others have said yeah, the problem of explaining why some of the information is sensitive is a catch-22. After all, I wouldn't be surprised if a media outlet decided to publish that information as well 'This is the sensitive information that required us to remove the content'. The precedent for that has already been set a la wikileaks. And yes, the gov't is made up of individuals and this particular gov't happens to be a republic so I agree, my assumption is that those in the intelligence community within the elected gov't have more knowledge than either the foundation or the sysop as to whether this information is benign or not. I'll stick with that assumption, of course who knows, it could all be a conspiracy =).

Yes, a military radio station. They are far from uncommon, and certainly have super secret things happening in them. But their existence and location? Not really a first class secret, nor one exclusively revealed by Wikipedia. :)

As you can see, the French Gov't took great pains to disguise this one. Were it not for some traitorous Wikipedia editor, then casual passers-by may have never suspected that it was anything other than a dairy farm, (perhaps owned by an eccentric architect). The terrorists are probably already en-route. Any minute now, we can expect free peoples of the world to fall under the iron hands of our enemies. Despite the heroic efforts of the DCRI.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_radio_station_of_Pier...

> Well apparently it was a military installation

So are Nellis and Groom Lake. So are the three air force bases in the central US that house Minuteman III ICBMs, and the two naval bases where the Trident-equipped Ohio-class submarines are based. So are the Pentagon and the White House.

All are covered on Wikipedia in far more detail than this radio station.

Compare the article about a radio station in France with the Wikipedia article about Bagram Airfield, which is the most important coalition facility in an active war zone:

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

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