FBI Orders Wikipedia to Remove the FBI Seal

Our increasingly-autocratic and -dictatorial government wants Wikipedia to remove the seal of the FBI.

FBI to Wikipedia: Remove our seal (John D. Sutter, 8/3/2010 CNN)

"(CNN) -- The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has threatened Wikipedia with legal action if the online encyclopedia doesn't remove the FBI's seal from its site.

"The seal is featured in an encyclopedia entry about the FBI.

"Wikipedia isn't backing down, however. The online encyclopedia -- which is run by a nonprofit group and is edited by the public -- sent a chiding letter to the FBI, explaining why, in its view, the FBI is off its legal rocker.

""In short, then, we are compelled as a matter of law and principle to deny your demand for removal of the FBI Seal from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons," the Wikimedia Foundation's general counsel, Mike Godwin, wrote in a letter to the FBI, which was posted online by the New York Times.

""We are in contact with outside counsel in this matter, and we are prepared to argue our view in court."

"The whimsically written letter from Wikipedia says the FBI's reading of relevant law is both "idiosyncratic" and "more importantly, incorrect." It also notes that the FBI's seal appears on other websites, including in an online entry from Encyclopedia Britannica.

"In a letter dated July 22, and also posted online by the Times, the FBI told Wikipedia it must remove the bureau's seal because the FBI had not approved use of the image.

""The FBI has not authorized use of the FBI seal on Wikipedia," the letter says. "The inclusion of a high quality graphic of the FBI seal on Wikipedia is particularly problematic, because it facilitates both deliberate and unwitting" copying and reprinting of the seal's image." [The article continues.]

The seal on Wikipedia could be used by domestic terrorists and criminals! We can't allow that, can we? It's for our safety that we should ban Wikipedia from using the FBI seal on their website!

Something like that?

From the New York Times article that is linked in the CNN article:

"Cindy Cohn, the legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, called the dust-up both “silly” and “troubling”; Wikipedia has a First Amendment right to display the seal, she said.

"“Really,” she added, “I have to believe the F.B.I. has better things to do than this.”"

Maybe the FBI is confusing Wikipedia with Wikileaks. They both start with "Wiki", you know...

Tweet