The Streisand Effect writ large
From
this entry at WikiPedia:
Military radio station of Pierre-sur-Haute
The military radio station of Pierre-sur-Haute is a 30 hectare (0.3 square kilometre) site used for French military communications. It is located on the Sauvain and Job communes, with the boundary between the Rh�ne-Alpes and Auvergne regions passing through the site. A civilian radio relay has also been built at this location by the telecommunications company T�l�diffusion de France.
The entry goes into some detail and then concludes with the following:
French language Wikipedia article
In April 2013, the radio station attracted attention after the French interior intelligence agency Direction centrale du renseignement int�rieur (DCRI) attempted to have the article removed from the French language Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation asked the intelligence agency what precise part(s) of the article were a problem in the eyes of the intelligence agency, noting that the article closely reflected information in a freely available television broadcast. The DCRI refused to give these details, and repeated its demand for deletion of the article. The Wikimedia Foundation refused to delete the article, and the DCRI pressured a volunteer administrator of the French language Wikipedia and resident of France into removing the article. The administrator, an employee of the state-owned Biblioth�que nationale de France, obeyed. According to a statement by Wikim�dia France:The DCRI summoned a Wikipedia volunteer in their offices on April 4th [2013]. This volunteer, which was one of those having access to the tools that allow the deletion of pages, was forced to delete the article while in the DCRI offices, on the understanding that he would have been held in custody and prosecuted if he did not comply. Under pressure, he had no other choice than to delete the article, despite explaining to the DCRI this is not how Wikipedia works. He warned the other sysops that trying to undelete the article would engage their responsibility before the law. This volunteer had no link with that article, having never edited it and not even knowing of its existence before entering the DCRI offices. He was chosen and summoned because he was easily identifiable, given his regular promotional actions of Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in France.
� Wikim�dia France
Later, the article was restored by another Wikipedia contributor. The French ministry of the interior told the Agence France-Presse that for the moment it did not wish to comment on the incident. As a result of the controversy, the article became the most-read page on the French Wikipedia. It was translated into multiple other languages. The French newspaper 20 minutes and Ars technica noted it as an example of the Streisand effect in action.
Heh. The DCRI needs to remember that the core design of the internet was to route around damage. Once something is posted, it cannot be unposted...
Posted by DaveH at April 7, 2013 11:20 AM