14 DAY TRIAL // Some people, groups, companies and governments, can't come to terms with a medium where information is mostly out of their controls.
Some countries have countered that with wide and institutionalized censorship, the Great Firewall of China for example, some industries try to take back control through a combination of abusive laws, censorship and heavy lobbying, for example the RIAA and the MPAA.
France though decided to simply force one Wikipedia editor into removing an article from the site. It worked too, though the article was quickly reinstated by editors outside of France. The Wikimedia Foundation's French branch provided some details about the incident.
The French domestic intelligence agency, Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur (DCRI) asked the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia and several related sites, to remove an article about a French military base, Pierre-sur-Haute, complaining that it contained classified information.
The article titled "Station hertzienne militaire de Pierre-sur-Haute" had been around for years. It seems that most of the info in the article had been revealed publicly in an interview by the commander of the base.
As such, Wikimedia didn't find evidence enough to warrant a removal. Wikipedia has a strict policy on sources, any info in an article has to be backed up by at least one existing third-party source, a book, an online article and so on.
"Unhappy with the Foundation’s answer, the DCRI summoned a Wikipedia volunteer in their offices on April 4th," Wikimedia France wrote.
"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," it said.
"Under pressure, he had no other choice than to delete the article, despite explaining to the DCRI this is not how Wikipedia works," it added.
The volunteer had no link to the article itself, having never made any contribution to it. Wikimedia, understandably, is not happy and has denounced the attempt at censorship.
The DCRI obviously didn't understand what it was dealing with or how it would all go down. Even if the article was removed from the site, it wasn't deleted outright so putting it back up was just as easy as removing it.
And since many people from around the world have the necessarily privileges to remove or reinstate articles on the site, bullying one person is not going to have the desired effect.
And indeed it hasn't, since the incident was revealed, the article became one of the most read on the French Wikipedia. If the government didn't want people reading about the base, they've achieved the exact opposite.
It can be assumed that one of the reasons the DCRI thought it could get away with this was that it didn't think the "internet" was as "real" as the "real world."
It's hard to imagine that they would have acted in the same way with a journalist in order to remove a published article. Or if that's how the DCRI treats journalists in France, it's a good thing that the internet makes it harder to silence individuals.