This item by Aviation Week's Catherine MacRae Hockmuth is hilarious and a great example of tech being exploited to create a troubling thesis:
Catherine writes, "When the Department of Homeland Security was formed from the merger of 22 government agencies in March 2003, many in Washington at the time, including me, worried it would become more of a bloated, slow-moving government blob than a fast-moving, finely-sharped terrorism-fighting machine. A 24-year old student at the California Institute of Technology has provided some startling evidence that DHS employees may be very bored at work.
"According to Virgil Griffith's Wikiscanner software, DHS is among the top 5 government agencies whose computers have been used to anonymously edit Wikipedia entries. Perhaps most disturbing though is that DHS employees are spending most of their Wiki time editing pages about television shows, movies and books (Is this why we still don't have the ability to scan shoes at the airport so people don't have to go barefoot?)
"Griffith says he wrote the software after reading that members of Congress have been editing their Wikipedia entries. DHS had 4,018 Wiki edits, placing the agency fourth among .gov addresses and behind NASA (6,846), the Department of Veteran's Affairs (4,210), and California state government (4,148).
"As much time as DHS employees are spending editing Wikipedia entries, their work is nothing compared to the folks at the Department of Defense, whose .mil account holders have been very busy on Wikipedia. The defense agency with the most edits originating from its .mil address is Army's Network Information Center, with 43,823 edits. The U.S. Air Forces comes in second with 21,478 edits, while the Naval Surface Warfare Center has 18, 591. The numbers drop dramatically from there with fourth and fifth place going to the Pentagon overall and the Office of the Secretary of Defense at 3,355 and 2,685 edits, respectively."
Of course, employees with private industry NEVER fart around on their computers at work. And it's also good to see the folks at DHS and DoD are concerned about inaccuracy wherever they find it. You can't pay for that kind of ethos.
(Gouge: Digg.com)
-- Ward
