See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign

On November 17th, 2005, an anonymous Wikipedia user deleted 15 paragraphs from an article on e-voting machine-vendor Diebold, excising an entire section critical of the company's machines. While anonymous, such changes typically leave behind digital fingerprints offering hints about the contributor, such as the location of the computer used to make the edits.

In this case, the changes came from an IP address reserved for the corporate offices of Diebold itself. And it is far from an isolated case. A new data-mining service launched Monday traces millions of Wikipedia entries to their corporate sources, and for the first time puts comprehensive data behind longstanding suspicions of manipulation, which until now have surfaced only piecemeal in investigations of specific allegations.

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The result: A database of 34.4 million edits, performed by 2.6 million organizations or individuals ranging from the CIA to Microsoft to Congressional offices, now linked to the edits they or someone at their organization's net address has made.

Some of this appears to be transparently self-interested, either adding positive, press release-like material to entries, or deleting whole swaths of critical material.

Voting-machine company Diebold provides a good example of the latter, with someone at the company's IP address apparently deleting long paragraphs detailing the security industry's concerns over the integrity of their voting machines, and information about the company's CEO's fund-raising for President Bush.

Full article: Wired Magazine - Aug 14, 2007

This shit again? Diebold is for the american left what clinton's blowjob was to the american right - a fucking obsession.

Seems to me, the guy running a voting machine company shouldn't be raising funds for either party. That whole appearance of impropriety thing. Just Sayin'.

I was not describing the american system.

So if the Dems win I can blame the voting system?

Yes. Whining is free.

I had never heard of voter caging before.

clicky

Oh, let the free market reign, and establish the voting process to the best bidder!

After all, given the "free market junkies" "enthusiasm", what better venue for such an ideologically-driven ($$$$$) "libertarian" "ideal" ($$$$$) to take hold in the American Commons...

We will our put our retinas against the touch-screen, and hope that our intentions our (statistically, mostly) right, and be optimistic (mostly) when the next corporate-whored President is elected.

Looks like it happens in Monarchies, too. From REUTERS:

Royal couple edited own Wikipedia entry

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Prince Johan Friso of the Netherlands and his wife Princess Mabel edited information about her past in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, the royal family said Friday.

Friso, 38, the younger brother of heir to the throne Prince Willem-Alexander, gave up his place in the line of succession in 2004 when he married Mabel Wisse Smit without official consent because of a controversial relationship she had had with a Dutch drug baron.

A spokesman for the Dutch royal family, headed by Queen Beatrix, confirmed that the entry on Wikipedia describing Mabel's relationship with slain drug baron Klaas Bruinsma had been changed from a computer in one of the queen's palaces.

When Prince Johan Friso asked the Dutch parliament in 2003 for permission to marry Mabel, Dutch media published details of her relationship with Bruinsma, who was shot and killed in 1991 in front of the Amsterdam Hilton hotel.

As a result, the couple decided not to seek parliament's permission for their marriage, which resulted in Friso renouncing his right to the throne.

Mabel said she had known Bruinsma vaguely but later admitted spending several nights on his boat.

The edits were discovered by Dutch media using Wiki Scanner, an online tool that tracks changes to Wikipedia, where anyone can submit and edit entries.

According to Wiki Scanner, the entry saying Mabel provided "incomplete and false information" about Bruinsma was changed to just "incomplete information" in January 2006.

Friso and his wife are the latest in a long list of people, companies and institutions that have changed their entries in Wikipedia. It is usually considered bad taste to change one's own entry in the online encyclopedia.

Wiki Scanner has also revealed that changes to entries on the Iraq war and Guantanamo Bay prison have been made from CIA and FBI computers.

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We are not amused.