Sounds very much like the WW2 "loose lips sink ships" dramatization. I would imagine that the blogsphere (due to it's 'collaborative' and 'public-access' features) would also be high up on Brig.Gen Atkinson's list of websites. I think the military has been very successful monitoring and censoring soldier's contributions to their private blogs. However, I don't know how concerned (and held responsible) the civilian public should be about contributing to either blogs or wikis. To better problematize the potentially dangerous use of Web content, looking at it as an issue information-source/flow would be better. If the government/military is concerned about sensitive information being leaked through blogs and wikis, get to it at the source -- whether it's being taken from soldiers' blogs, flikr sites, or if journalists on the field covering war are giving out too much information, etc. But, if the public is only aggregating content that is already and rightfully public, I don't think it should be censored at all. The potential contributions of wikis and blogs to inform and fuel discourse is vital for today's networked public -- particularly about issues such as the 'War on Terror'. Muzammil Hussain mmhussain@wisc.edu School of Journalism and Mass Communication University of Wisconsin-Madison On Feb 15, 2008 7:19 PM, Barry Wellman <wellman@chass.utoronto.ca> wrote:
From the Toronto Star, February 15, 2008. (I am not making this up). Allan Woods, "Military Issues Web Warning"
"Brig.-Gen Peter Atkinson... warned that seemingly innocuous photos, videos and news reports can be the source for as much as 80% of the intelligence that insurgents routinely gather on operations....
"Wikipedia is among the most dangerous of the public-access websites, he said.... 'Due to its collaborative content contribution, anybody can add to the content, providing a compilation of details on a specific incident, like the descriptions of a casualty, photos, locations, and news articles contributed by several sources,' Atkinson told reporters."
BW: To check this out, I searched on Canadian, Taliban and 2008, and found nothing currently revelatory, even in the article, "War in Afghanistan (2001-present)". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_%282001%E2%80%93present%29
I do not have the time, inclination or resources to search the history of every article to see who revealed what, when, where, why, or how.
As an influential essay on Wikipedia says, "Wikipedia is not a newspaper." Therefore, I wonder if there will be much operational reporting on it that lasts more than a short while. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_not_a_newspaper
YMMV.
Barry Wellman _______________________________________________________________________
S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Room 418 Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman<http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/%7Ewellman> fax:+1-416-978-7162 Updating history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php Elvis wouldn't be singing "Return to Sender" these days _______________________________________________________________________
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