
MSNBC Blocking Searches for "Wikileaks"  - aresant
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/?id=11881780&q=wikileaks&p=1&st=1&sm=user
======
Zak
The gun camera video doesn't seem to have been picked up by any mainstream US
news outlets, at least, not that show up on Google News. It's on the BBC's
front page. This seems odd to me.

~~~
dotBen
There's a number of reasons why that video hasn't, and probably won't, appear
on mainstream news (for what it is worth, I use to work for BBC News Website
in a technical capacity):

Firstly, most mainstream news websites have rules and policies on showing
videos coming from unknown and unvarifieable sources - especially war. The
concern is that videos can be edited and doctored to make them appear to
construe something else that doesn't represent the true facts.

I'm not saying this video is doctored/edited in this way, but it's a blanket
policy most news orgs will keep to. Instead they will report that WikiLeaks
have this video and link to them instead. Which is what is happening here.

There is a second, and somewhat sad issue here too. That video remains
property and copyright of the US military, which means news organizations
probably wouldn't want to redistribute it anyway as they don't have
permission. News orgs have been known to republish photos and videos they
don't own when there is extra-ordinary reasons but I don't know if this is
enough to warrant that.

As an aside, I'm also concerned that it could get pulled from YouTube if the
US military issue a DMCA notice or similar request due to national security.

~~~
dantheman
All government video/pictures etc are public domain.

~~~
dotBen
It's more murkey than that. As I understand it, all video that is released by
the govenment and army is public domain -- but it is not clear exactly how
this video was obtained.

In the website they say that they made a freedom of information request but
later say they had to decrypt the video.

That seems to suggest that the video was not released to them under the
freedom of information request and instead an encrypted original was obtained
by other means not explained.

I doubt any video of recent active combat is going to be declassified and thus
available under a FOIR, and if you obtain something illegally/unofficially
that doesn't suddenly make it public domain.

(to be clear, I'm glad this video is out there - it is an important story
being told. But IMHO the distribution status of the video is a reasonable
discussion topic none the less)

~~~
cookiecaper
Are leaks of classified info usually prosecuted under copyright laws? It seems
that they would apply something more severe or specific. It is my
understanding that all works of the US gov. are public domain and classified
content is protected under secrecy laws, not copyright laws.

~~~
rgejman
If they are released, even accidentally, or stolen, they cannot be enjoined.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers>

------
krschultz
Remove your tin foil hats, while MSNBC's search sucks they still have a
mention of it that was linked from the front page.

[http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/04/05/4117730-wik...](http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/04/05/4117730-wikileaks-
posts-combat-video-from-iraq-showing-civilian-casualties)

Also NYTimes has one:
[http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/05/us/politics/AP-
US...](http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/05/us/politics/AP-US-Iraq-
Shooting.html)

~~~
aphyr
Tin foil hats?

/?q=wikileak works, /?q=wikileaks returns an error. It's a politically
sensitive topic involving the death of two press employees, possibly unethical
conduct by the military, and the government has attempted to suppress its
release. What _more_ do you want?

It seems pretty obvious to me that their search dept is trying to stop people
from finding the story. Either that or their search is broken in a truly bad
way--given that those words should stem to the same query, it's suggestive to
say the least.

[edit] Looks like their article search is working again.

[edit] You know what? I'm sorry, that was premature. It is suggestive, but
there are other plausible (and, to my mind, preferable) explanations.
"wikileak" returns web results, whereas "wikileaks" returns article results.
MSNBC may have a local index for their stories and a fallback to Bing. Perhaps
it's a failure for a newly-emerging search term that only applies to the local
index, which does _not_ stem queries. Or perhaps they're doing extra
processing for stories which failed, for any number of reasons.

~~~
conflux0
Just think about it this way. How many people using msnbc will actually make
the query that will match the regex "/^wikileaks$/i". If they were truly
trying to prevent people from accessing information about it they would have
done a better regex.

"It seems pretty obvious to me that their search dept is trying to stop people
from finding the story. Either that or their search is broken in a truly bad
way--given that those words should stem to the same query, it's suggestive to
say the least."

It really doesn't. I'm going to take a big guess here and say that the good
people over at MSNBC are not that inept.

~~~
aphyr
My guess is they're not doing regexes. Someone in charge probably said "Stop
people from searching for wikileaks" and they added that term to a hacked-
together blocklist ASAP. Either that or they added it to a special list of
queries that get extra processing (topic summary for the top of results,
perhaps) which was crashing, and deployed without checking the results. Either
way, it looks like their search is working now although the error persists,
which suggests things over at MSNBC are much in flux. :)

------
SlyShy
Another interesting thing: on Facebook I have a fake account that I use to
check how my account appears to other people. Statuses and links I've posted
to collateralmurder.com keep disappearing from other peoples' displays.

~~~
blhack
That's interesting, but I'm not seeing the same thing...

I have two accounts, one that I signed up for my freshman year and another
that I signed up for when I transferred schools. I haven't signed into the
former in about 4 years but just did so and saw the story that I had posted
this morning from my other account.

Not saying you're wrong, just that I'm getting different results.

~~~
SlyShy
They seem to have been restored. There was, however, definitely a window of
time when they were ghost deleted.

------
tmorton
"wikileaks video" works. Malice, incompetence, etc?

~~~
jcromartie
I would bet that "wikileaks video" will not work soon, too.

~~~
abentspoon
You're right. "wikileaks video" now returns an error.

------
orangecat
Bizarre. "Wikileak" works and brings up wikileaks.org as the first hit.

~~~
pauldelany
not anymore

~~~
conflux0
That is the first result I get.

------
davi
Yet Bing works: <http://www.bing.com/search?q=wikileaks>

------
westbywest
Searching for "Wikileaks" on MSNBC yields this error: "We are unable to
display search results at this time. Please accept our apologies for the
inconvenience and try your request again."

Searching for "Tiger Woods" yields the results you'd expect.

~~~
ricree
Though oddly enough, it still returns the story despite the error message.

------
abentspoon
Earlier this afternoon, MSNBC aired a 10 minute segment on the video. It seems
unlikely this was intentionally censored.

<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31510813/#36182090>

------
jcromartie
GE (a massive player in the military industry) is a major stakeholder in
MSNBC/NBC. They make a lot of the parts that go in the helicopters involved in
this latest video.

I think this one can be filed squarely under "malice."

Edit: updated for accuracy.

~~~
cjoh
That is incorrect. MSNBC is owned by NBC Universal which Comcast bought a 51%
stake in the company to GE's 49%.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_Universal>

~~~
brettbender
Having a "major stake" doesn't necessarily imply that it owns the majority.
You wouldn't call 49% a major stake in NBC?

~~~
cjoh
the comment in question was edited to say "major stake" instead of "owned by"
after my correction. Thanks!

------
rms
This story can be killed now; the video is now the center picture/video
headline on CNN.com. Apparently the mainstream media was waiting for
confirmation that the video was real.

------
rms
This just came out, so it may have been that the mainstream media didn't want
to report until the authenticity of the video was confirmed by an independent
source. <http://twitter.com/BreakingNews/status/11660278998> See if the news
stories start showing up in a few hours before calling conspiracy.

------
johSho7w
And yet: <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34149853/>

------
dotBen
It is worth noting that NBC was until a few months ago wholly owned by General
Electric, who are of course a major supplier of hardware and services to the
US military.

GE don't put much info about their military work on their corporate front
page, but if you search their subsidary sites you'll see that they supply
everything from fighter aircraft engines through to IT systems (um, perhaps
even video encoding and encryptions systems).

<http://www.ge-ip.com/industries/mil-aero>

Comcast bought a controlling stake in the company last year, but GE remains a
significant shareholder. (See
[http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/03/news/companies/comcast_nbc/i...](http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/03/news/companies/comcast_nbc/index.htm))

------
aphyr
The search is working again, and MSNBC has an official article available.

[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36182383/ns/world_news-
mideastn_...](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36182383/ns/world_news-
mideastn_africa/)

~~~
gort
It's only partially working at this time. It seems to return "articles" but
nothing else.

------
tzs
Did you even look at the results page when you try the search? It in fact
gives the search results. Yes, there is a spurious error message at the top,
but the results are there.

------
sili
It seems to be inconsistent across all MSNB properties. I found this segment
(through bing search) of show that runs on MSNB in which the wikileaks video
is discussed: [http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/video-u-s-troops-
shoo...](http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/video-u-s-troops-shoot-
innocent-civilians/60xhvp7)

------
rudyfink
I'd propose the theory that a plausible explanation is that when the domain
becomes unreachable/times out the search engine removes it from search
results.

Someone might have made a design decision that says that domains that cannot
be reached are not shown to customers in their results.

~~~
cynicalkane
Except that they're blocking searches for "wikileaks", not results for
"wikileaks.org".

~~~
rudyfink
I think all we know is that the search is failing to produce results.

I also tried "collateralmurder" and "collateralmurder.com" and both fail to
give any web results and indicate no warning banner.

Both results do link to MSNBC's own stories which cite the links.

You may very well be correct that the cause of the result was deliberate
blocking. I was simply trying to suggest that their might be some automated
error prevention heuristic at work that was potentially a cause of the same
effect.

------
donohoe
Also worth noting: I viewed the video on YouTube this morning (6 hours ago
aprox.) and the View counter has not changes from 359 in all that time.

I see more comments so I do not believe this is a browser cache issue.

Or maybe YouTube doesn't update that value on the fly? Anyone know more?

~~~
ugh
YouTube is always slow updating its view counter (certainly several hours if
not a day behind). Completely normal, but certainly already started more than
one conspiracy theory :)

------
donohoe
Trying to post the YouTube video to Facebook allowed for the link but none of
the usual meta data or embedded video.

~~~
natrius
That occasionally breaks. I've had problems with it today on an innocuous
site.

------
elblanco
Just saw Wolf talking about in CNN about 30 minutes ago.

------
thefool
posted this to my social network, definitely looks like malice.

------
blhack
It's working now.

------
1010011010
bing sucks.

------
conflux0
It works perfectly fine for me guys. I'm not sure what you are talking about.

~~~
danudey
I just tried it, it doesn't work for me either. 'Wikileak' works, but not
'wikileaks'.

~~~
conflux0
ah your right I put in additional words. That is weird though since its only
for the embedded bing search.

