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Of Orwell, Wikipedia and Guantánamo Bay

By Patrick J. Lyons

Winston Smith, the protagonist in George Orwell’s “1984,” worked at a government job he hated,

rewriting history to conform to current propaganda imperatives.

A group called Wikileaks asserted that

the United States military appeared to have a Winston Smith of its own at the Guantánamo Bay naval base,

mucking about with the way Wikipedia and news sites portray the base and, curiously, posting odd assertions about Fidel Castro.

Julian Assange of Wikileaks laid out evidence on the group’s web site Wednesday

indicating that computers belonging to the base’s Joint Task Force-Guantánamo command

were used for the suspicious online activity, including:

“deleting detainee ID numbers from Wikipedia last month, the systematic posting of unattributed ’self praise’ comments on news organization web sites in response to negative press, boosting pro-Guantánamo stories on the internet news site Digg and even modifying Fidel Castro’s encyclopedia article to describe the Cuban president as ‘an admitted transexual’ [sic].”

[..]

Still, it never looks good to be caught Winston Smith-ing it on the Internet,

least of all for the American military,

which has gotten one black eye after another over its information programs.

And just as Orwell’s character found out, escaping detection is harder than it seems.

[...]