TechWag

Image by Getty Images via Daylife In one of the more bizarre stories about the what is happening with the department of Homeland Security, the immigration department has been told not use Wikipedia as a determining source on if someone should be allowed asylum in the USA or not.

Wired Threat Level reports that Lamilem Badasav was denied entry based on her paperwork, which the DHS immigration officials decided was not strong enough to determine her identity. Sending her on to Basada as part of the deportation process, although it does appear that she entered the USA on a false Italian passport, and then presented her laissez-passer papers to the immigration department. This complicates the matter, if at first you cannot identify the person, then subsequent lookups might be difficult. Although it probably would have been better to contact the state department rather than consult Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is just not the authoritative system that many people would like to believe it is. While much of it can be user edited, the whole process of editing has become much more like a political process, like the scrubbing of Paulins data before the republican national convention.

We are still working out the issues with Web 2.0, what data can be considered authoritative, and what data cannot. It is surprising that anyone would consider Wikipedia authoritative in anything. It might have good information, and might be amusing, but we have seen too many times that Wikipedia information can be scrubbed for political, social, or corporate purposes.

Tags: Wikipedia, scrubbed, deny, immigration, dhs, department of immigration, court ruling, Lamilem Badasa, sad

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