The French intelligence service, DCRI, has a volunteer from Wikipedia under threat of “serious and immediate retaliation’ forced to an article on the online encyclopedia to remove. The article would be secret military information and publication would be in conflict with the law.
The French intelligence agency Direction Central du Renseignement Intérieur took at the beginning of march, contact the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that Wikipedia is overseeing. The government agency claimed that the article Station hertzienne military the Pierre-sur-Haute is private information and that, therefore, there was a conflict with the French Code of Criminal law. The DCRI claimed that the article be taken offline, writes Wikimedia in a statement.
The foundation declined the request to honor because it is not clear what information means and the DCRI here also no further details provided. The article is based on publicly available sources and the largest part of the text would have been written in response to remarks of the mayor of Pierre-sur-Haute in a video interview. Moreover, it was the article since 24 July 2009 online, according to Wikimedia.
The intelligence service took no pleasure, and approached a French volunteer. The man indicated that he does not have any role in the article had had, not with the Wikimedia Foundation was employed and also have no role in the hosting played. Nevertheless, forced the secret service man to use his administrative rights to the article offline, with the statement that refusal “serious and immediate retaliation’ would result. A other volunteer of Wikipedia has the article since been back.
Wikimedia mentions the action of the DCRI ‘unnecessary, irresponsible and counterproductive,” and the foundation is calling on governments to contact the foundation to beveiligingsvraagstukken. “In the past we have worked with various government agencies worldwide to resolve concerns in a way that does justice to the interests of the services and the principles of the Wikipedia community.” Earlier on Saturday it became known that the Russian telecomautoriteit demands that Wikipedia has an article about drugs offline.