French Intelligence Agency Sees Firsthand The Streisand Effect

The French government is learning firsthand about the Streisand Effect after Wikimedia France issued April 6 a press release stating that a domestic intelligence agency threatened a volunteer with arrest unless he deleted an entry about a military communications base near Lyons.

According to the French chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, the Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur, the intelligence branch of the Ministry of the Interior, contacted the foundation in early March, claiming that an article about the Station hertzienne militaire de Pierre-sur-Haute contained classified military information, and demanded its immediate deletion. The foundation refused to do so.

The DCRI then summoned a Wikipedia volunteer on April 4 to its offices, and then forced him to delete the article "on the understanding that he would have been held in custody and prosecuted if he did not comply." The Guardian identifies him as a curator with the National Library of France.