Into.the.Void.

Inspired from another project called “Anonymous Wikipedia edits from the Norwegian parliament and government offices” I decided to create something similar for the Hellenic Parliament.

I downloaded the XML dumps (elwiki-20140702-pages-meta-history.xml.7z) for the elwiki from http://dumps.wikimedia.org/elwiki/20140702/. The compressed file is less than 600Mb but uncompressing it leads to a 73Gb XML which contains the full history of edits. Then I modified a parser I found on this blog to extract the data I wanted: Page Title, Timestamp and IP.

Then it was easy to create a list that contains all the edits that have been created by Hellenic Parliament IPs (195.251.32.0/22) throughout the History of Hellenic Wikipedia:
The list https://gist.github.com/kargig/d2cc8e3452dbde774f1c.

Interesting edits

1. Former Prime Minister “Κωνσταντίνος Σημίτης”
   An IP from inside the Hellenic Parliament tried to remove the following text at least 3 times in 17-18/02/2014. This is a link to the first edit: Diff 1.

   Για την περίοδο 1996-2001 ξοδεύτηκαν 5,2 τρις δρχ σε εξοπλισμούς. Οι δαπάνες του Β` ΕΜΠΑΕ (2001-2006) υπολογίζεται πως έφτασαν τα 6 με 7 τρις δρχ.[http://www.enet.gr/online/online_hprint?q=%E5%EE%EF%F0%EB%E9%F3%EC%EF%DF&a=&id=71538796 ”To κόστος των εξοπλισμών”], εφημερίδα ”Ελευθεροτυπία”, δημοσίευση [[1 Αυγούστου]] [[2001]].Έπειτα απο τη σύλληψη και ενοχή του Γ.Καντά,υπάρχουν υπόνοιες για την εμπλοκή του στο σκάνδαλο με μίζες από Γερμανικές εταιρίες στα εξοπλιστικά,κάτι το οποίο διερευνάται απο την Εισαγγελία της Βρέμης.

2. Former MP “Δημήτρης Κωνσταντάρας”
   Someone modified his biography twice. Diff Links: Diff 1 Diff 2.
3. Former football player “Δημήτρης Σαραβάκος”
   In the following edit someone updated this player’s bio adding that he ‘currently plays in porn films’. Diff link. The same editor seems to have removed that reference later, diff link.
4. Former MP “Θεόδωρος Ρουσόπουλος”
   Someone wanted to update this MP’s bio and remove some reference of a scandal. Diff link.
5. The movie “Ραντεβού με μια άγνωστη”
   Claiming that the nude scenes are probably not from the actor named “Έλενα Ναθαναήλ”. Diff link.
6. The soap opera “Χίλιες και Μία Νύχτες (σειρά)”
   Someone created the first version of the article on this soap opera. Diff Link.
7. Politician “Γιάννης Λαγουδάκος”
   Someone edited his bio so it seemed that he would run for MP with the political party called “Ανεξάρτητοι Έλληνες”. Diff Link
8. University professor “Γεώργιος Γαρδίκας”
   Someone edited his profile and added a link for amateur football team “Αγιαξ Αιγάλεω”. Diff Link.
9. Politician “Λευτέρης Αυγενάκης”
   Someone wanted to fix his bio and upload a file, so he/she added a link from the local computer “C:\Documents and Settings\user2\Local Settings\Temp\ΑΥΓΕΝΑΚΗΣ”. Diff link.
10. MP “Κώστας Μαρκόπουλος”
    Someone wanted to fix his bio regarding his return to the “Νέα Δημοκρατία” political party. Diff Link.
11. (Golden Dawn) MP “Νίκος Μιχαλολιάκος”
    Someone was trying to “fix” his bio removing some accusations. Diff Link.
12. (Golden Dawn) MP “Ηλίας Κασιδιάρης”
    Someone was trying to fix his bio and remove various accusations and incidents. Diff Link 1, Diff Link 2, Diff Link 3.

Who’s done the edits ?
The IP range of the Hellenic Parliament is not only used by MPs but from people working in the parliament as well. Don’t rush to any conclusions…
Oh, and the IP 195.251.32.48 is probably a proxy inside the Parliament.

Threat Model
Not that it matters a lot for MPs and politicians in general, but it’s quite interesting that if someone “anonymously” edits a wikipedia article, wikimedia stores the IP of the editor and provides it to anyone that wants to download the wiki archives. If the IP range is known, or someone has the legal authority within a country to force an ISP to reveal the owner of an IP, it is quite easy to spot the actual person behind an “anonymous” edit. But if someone creates an account to edit wikipedia articles, wikimedia does not publish the IPs of its users, the account database is private. To get an IP of a user, one would need to take wikimedia to courts to force them to reveal that account’s IP address. Since every wikipedia article edit history is available for anyone to download, one is actually “more anonymous to the public” if he/she logs in or creates a (new) account every time before editing an article, than editing the same article without an account. Unless someone is afraid that wikimedia will leak/disclose their account’s IPs.
So depending on their threat model, people can choose whether they want to create (new) account(s) before editing an article or not 🙂

Similar Projects

Bonus
Anonymous edit from “Synaspismos Political Party” (ΣΥΡΙΖΑ) address range for “Δημοκρατική Αριστερά” political party article, changing it’s youth party blog link to the PASOK youth party blog link. Diff Link

Filed by kargig at 15:10 under General,Greek,Internet,Privacy
Tags: anonymity, hellenic parliament, Privacy, wikimedia, wikipedia
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