No Wikipedia articles on him either, and reports of people getting permanently banned from Wikipedia for trying to create that article, or even mentioning him in another.

Politically charged topics on wikipedia need multiple reliable sources.

I can’t find any sources, that would pass as reputable on wikipedia, on this guy.

Maybe if there was a script from Senate from Rand Paul, who spoke his name publicly, that could be used. New York Post is the only kind-of-reputable source I can find, I don’t think that’s enough for now

edit: people link Conservapedia etc, but you can quickly see the stuff is full of misinformation. The like to point out, as Rand did, that Schiff daughter was in some relationship with the CIA guy. This is provably false.

Maybe the Wikipedia rule on sources is actually good.

It's almost like the missions of popular websites fall in line with protecting individuals against government-sponsored attacks on whistleblowers.

Witness protection isn't some flashy thing in movies. It's real and society benefits from it.

I will not take part in some chilling-effect and/or stochastic terrorism effort (see Ping Pong Pizza incident); I understand why Google, wikipedia and Facebook wouldn't want to be party to that either.

I expect most people who hang out on HN would understand that there are no good outcomes when PII is in the wrong hands - that's not even a controversial idea.

A better analogy might be NSFL videos (people dying, mutilation etc.) I would be upset to find such a video auto playing in my feed. But I also think it’s a whole different level of offense compared to words on a page. And I know not to visit certain pages on 4chan, for example, if I want to avoid seeing such content. So do I benefit from using moderated platforms like Reddit instead? I would say yes. But then I would also suggest you need to apply the same logic to words on a page; if you don’t want to see them, stick to platforms that censor them for you.

Regarding PII, I’m not sure how you can argue that the name of a public figure is PII. The person in question is a “whistleblower” in some sense, but it’s very debatable whether he actually has any legal protections regarding others publicizing his name. As far as I know, he is not protected by WITSEC or any official, legal whistleblower statute or act. All censorship or omission of his name has been voluntary on the part of media organizations and social media platforms.

I vehemently disagree with the assumption that the act of whistleblowing transforms one into public figure.

edit: A better analogy would be a recipe for crack cocaine. I have 0 use for that knowledge, and I definitely won't spread it because at best, my audience will have no use for it either, or at worst, they'll act on it and I'll likely find their actions disagreeable. If I find a link that says "How to make crack in 10 steps", I won't click it. I won't appreciate it if someone randomly injects crack-cooking instructions in a discussion about baking soda or sodium perchlorate or whatever might be one of the ingredients.

I have no control what you (or others) propagate, as is your right - but I will not be part of it. I understand why Facebook, Wikipedia and others won't either (they too, have 1A rights).

And again, horse, barn, door. It's gone. It ain't coming back.

2. Leaving that aside, why permanently ban those who make such contributions to Wikipedia?

2. Propensity for creating such a page is a strong indication of extremely poor judgement.

Yes. You do. WISTEC covers their bases, but they can't force large organizations to play ball at a whim. Those organizations need to be willing to help. And it's heart warming to see that they are.

Citizenship has no bearing on the internal policies of private corporations. If you don't like the large corporate offerings, do without and use other services. Being a consumer of their services doesn't grant legal standing because you haven't suffered any definable injury.

[0] https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Eric_Ciaramella [1] https://www.conservapedia.com/Eric_Ciaramella

> Ciaramella, who has been derided by critics as a beta male, is represented by kiddie-porn lawyer Mark Zaid.

Regardless of political leaning, you can't take anything like this seriously, surely.

And this Eric C character turned out to be a nobody (maybe a CIA analyst). So why censor this name? Could be a NSL? (But can that somehow compel the recipient to censor a name anywhere?)

Anyone at google want to be a whistleblower and share this list?

Yes, obviously. Nobody is forced to have an absolutist position on censorship just like it's mostly silly to have an absolutist position on anything else.

>Who determines that "pretty clear difference?"

In this case Google, which is a private business. In other cases the government, or the courts. Depends on the issue at hand.

There's nothing contradictory about partial censorship in the same way there's nothing contradictory about having a speed limit.

No. It's a game that was played out long ago by responsible organizations. It's just that the tech industry is stumbling upon it these days.

For example, responsible media outlets don't publish information about rape victims or suicides unless there is a compelling public interest.

I can follow both arguments but there's only room for implementing one in any given society. Societies overlapping like they do now (thanks to globalization and, to no small part, the internet) doesn't make that easier.

And to head off the "no, deleting spam is clearly distinct from censorship," imagine you write a book, so we're dealing purely with ideas.

Obviously, for anyone to read it, you have to promote it. If you post it in too many places or are too "hypey", you'll quickly get banned as spamming. You got censored, there's no way around it.

So we've always been in the "what censorship is OK" realm.

To answer your question:

Protecting a whistleblower's identity is in the interest of US society as a whole. It protects the individual somewhat from persecution which in turn encourages people to blow the whistle on illegal activities, thus benefiting society.

I can't claim to know anything about ciarmella's background, save what hyper-partisan, conservative outlets have spewed. But absent more even-handed coverage, or rebuttals from liberal and left-leaning outlets, the details of his personal history, and affiliations do seem to merit some level of public scrutiny. Anyone interested can look him up on Breitbart, conservapedia /wikispooks, or through any other connservativr outlet (oddly enough, not fox last time I checked). But I'd rather not link to those rags if I'm not confident of the veracity of the information within.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_livin...

I'm not sure that Google has a published set of guidelines. Obviously Hacker News has a different set of guidelines.

Individual corporations are allowed to make their own guidelines. This is what Libertarians call "freedom of association".

Outing whistle-blowers (or supposed whistle-blowers) is bad for democracy. The government is supposed to be transparent to the people. This does not mean that the people should be transparent to the government, or that dissidents should be outed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/while-were-talking-a...

Such ambiguity fosters an environment of pre-emptive accusations, rife with alternating investigations and immunity.

Look, I'm not saying that's what happened, I don't know anything about it, but the idea that we should be shutting down inquiry into CIA agents interfering in other parts of our government, given the known history of the CIA, is absolutely crazy to me. And it's not like they've changed! We're talking about an organization that just recently illegally spied on the Congressional illegal CIA torture investigation and then lied about it to Congress (also a crime) - and got away with it!

Even in other branches of the government, we know that "whistleblowers" are not always acting in good faith - the NY Times just did a story about a "whistleblower" lying to the press about what was happening and using that as an excuse to leak people's personal information to the press, all in order to advance his own political agenda. If that can happen at the IRS, surely it can happen at the CIA? And surely we should at least be able to look into whether that's a possibility>

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/17/business/media/ronan-farr...

And dang is nowhere to be found

Hard to see how you could miss such an important distinction between the two unless you had some other motive.

>Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data.