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GOP Investigation Pressures Wikipedia to Reveal Identities of Editors Accused of 'Bias' Against Israel
The effort furthers the goals of the Heritage Foundation, which has launched a plan to "identify and target Wikipedia editors" using a number of underhanded tactics.
Aug 28, 2025
A pair of House Republicans is moving forward with an investigation that will seek to reveal the identities of Wikipedia editors who have edited articles to include information that portrays Israel negatively.
On Wednesday, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chair of the House Oversight Committee, and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), chair of the House Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation, sent a letter to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that owns the free encyclopedia.
The representatives asked Wikimedia's CEO, Maryana Iskander, for "assistance in obtaining documents and communications regarding individuals (or specific accounts) serving as Wikipedia volunteer editors who violated Wikipedia platform policies as well as your own efforts to thwart intentional, organized efforts to inject bias into important and sensitive topics."
The letter requested information about "nation state actors" or "academic institutions" that may have been involved in efforts to "edit or influence content identified as possibly violating Wikipedia policies."
A spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation told The Hill that they were reviewing the request.
"We welcome the opportunity to respond to the committee's questions and to discuss the importance of safeguarding the integrity of information on our platform," the spokesperson said.
The GOP investigation coincides with a long-standing objective of the far-right Heritage Foundation, which has accused Wikipedia of anti-conservative bias and promoting content that portrays Israel in a negative light, and sought to unmask the identities of the internet users who run it.
The letter sent by Comer and Mace requests that Wikimedia provide Congress with "records showing identifying and unique characteristics of accounts (such as names, IP addresses, registration dates, user activity logs) for editors" who have been "subject to actions" by Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee, which resolves internal disputes between editors.
It was, in essence, a request by Congress for Wikipedia to "dox" many of its editors.
"In the culture of Wikipedia editing, it is common for individuals to use pseudonyms to protect their privacy and avoid personal threats," wrote tech writer and Wikipedia expert Stephen Harrison for Slate in February. "Revealing an editor's personal information without their consent, a practice known as doxing, is a form of harassment that can result in a user's being permanently banned from the site."
Of chief concern to the legislators is investigating Wikipedia's handling of content related to Israel. They cited a report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a pro-Israel lobbying group, which the legislators said "raised troubling questions about potentially systematic efforts to advance antisemitic and anti-Israel information in Wikipedia articles related to conflicts with the state of Israel."
The ADL report makes the allegation that 30 "bad-faith" Wikipedia editors, whose identities are not public, were collaborating to edit pages about the Israel-Palestine conflict by "spotlighting criticism of Israel and downplaying Palestinian terrorist violence and antisemitism," and in the process violating Wikipedia's commitment to neutrality.
That report, however, has been heavily criticized, including by some of the academics it cited. In a piece for The Forward, Shira Klein, whose research on Wikipedia's documentation of the Holocaust appears in the report, said the ADL "inaccurately" used her work, and the work of others, as part of its "ramped-up efforts to police public discourse about Israel," and quoted other researchers who felt the same.
Klein described the study's interpretation of the facts as "very skewed" and said it was reliant "on a faulty premise: that criticism of Israel or Zionism is inherently antisemitic."
"To establish foul play, the ADL would need to demonstrate that Wikipedia content about Israel and Zionism regularly expresses as fact ideas that diverge from broadly held scholarly opinions on the matters in question," Klein said. "But where is the evidence of editors repeatedly misrepresenting or contradicting peer-reviewed literature? There is none. The report simply wants us to take the ADL's word for it."
The ADL's report, as well as a similar report from the Atlantic Council alleging that Wikipedia editors had conspired to spread pro-Kremlin propaganda, are the sole pieces of evidence cited by Comer and Mace in their request for identifying information on Wikipedia's editors.
However, right-wing efforts to undermine Wikipedia's independence and attack the privacy of its editors go back much further.
In January, documents obtained by The Forward's Arno Rosenfeld revealed a secret plan by Heritage, the think tank behind the authoritarian Project 2025 playbook, to "identify and target Wikipedia editors" who the organization said were "abusing their position."
Among the methodologies it directed Heritage employees to use include "analyzing text patterns, usernames, and technical data through data breach analysis, fingerprinting, [human intelligence], and technical targeting."
The targeting methods also included "creating fake Wikipedia user accounts to try to trick editors into identifying themselves by sharing personal information or clicking on malicious tracking links that can identify people who click on them."
According to Rosenfeld, "The Heritage Foundation sent the pitch deck outlining the Wikipedia initiative to Jewish foundations and other prospective supporters of Project Esther, its roadmap for fighting antisemitism and anti-Zionism."
Jewish Voice for Peace has described Project Esther as Heritage's "blueprint for using the federal government and private institutions to dismantle the Palestine solidarity movement and broader US civil society, under the guise of 'fighting antisemitism.'"
"Even if you take issue with how the site is currently framing the conflict, that doesn't justify Heritage's plan," Harrison wrote. "Targeting Wikipedia editors personally, instead of debating their edits on the platform, marks a dangerous escalation."
Coming amid the Trump administration's crackdowns against campus protests and efforts to deport immigrants over pro-Palestine speech, critics have described the House Republican investigation as the latest GOP attempt to censor criticism and the spread of unflattering information about Israel.
Adam Johnson, a co-host for the political podcast Citations Needed, described it in a post on X as "House Republicans working with the ADL and Atlantic Council to discipline Wikipedia into parroting the Israeli and NATO line."
Johnson noted that this push was coming as the clear majority of Americans, including an overwhelming number of Democrats, now oppose US support for Israel, with many now believing the country is committing a genocide.
"Rather than end the genocide," Johnson said, "the response instead is to continue firing, doxing, smearing, and attempting to censor inconvenient narratives."
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Letting 'Secrecy Prevail,' SCOTUS Declines to Hear Challenge to NSA Mass Surveillance
"If the courts are unwilling to hear Wikimedia's challenge, then Congress must step in to protect Americans' privacy," said the Knight First Amendment Institute's litigation director.
Feb 21, 2023
Privacy advocates on Tuesday blasted the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to hear the Wikimedia Foundation's case against a federal program for spying on Americans' online communications with people abroad.
The nonprofit foundation, which operates Wikipedia, took aim at the National Security Agency (NSA) program "Upstream" that—under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—searches emails, internet messages, and other web communications leaving and entering the United States.
"In the course of this surveillance, both U.S. residents and individuals located outside the U.S. are impacted," the foundation explained in a statement. "The NSA copies and combs through vast amounts of internet traffic, including private data showing what millions of people around the world are browsing online, from communications with friends and family to reading and editing knowledge on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects."
"This government surveillance has had a measurable chilling effect on Wikipedia users, with research documenting a drop in traffic to Wikipedia articles on sensitive topics, following public revelations about the NSA's mass surveillance in 2013," the group added.
Last August, Wikimedia—represented by the ACLU, Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, and the law firm Cooley LLP—petitioned the high court to take up the case after a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit dismissed it based on the "state secrets privilege."
"The Supreme Court's refusal to grant our petition strikes a blow against an individual's right to privacy and freedom of expression—two cornerstones of our society and the building blocks of Wikipedia," said Wikimedia legal director James Buatti. "We will continue to champion everyone's right to free knowledge, and urge Congress to take on the issue of mass surveillance as it evaluates whether to reauthorize Section 702 later this year."
\u201cDisappointing decision today by the Supreme Court to deny cert in Wikimedia v. NSA, a challenge to the mass surveillance of Americans' international communications. \n\nIn short: the government's unjustified claims of secrecy prevailed over the rule of law. https://t.co/NZirFIjXfF\u201d— Ashley Gorski (@Ashley Gorski) 1676998617
As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, in a separate case, the ACLU sued the NSA along with the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Justice, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence for failing to respond to public records requests for information about Section 702, which will expire if it is not reauthorized.
"Before Congress votes on reauthorizing this law, Americans should know how the government wants to use these sweeping spying powers," Patrick Toomey, deputy project director for the ACLU's National Security Project, said at the time.
Responding to the development in the Wikimedia case on Tuesday, Toomey declared that "the Supreme Court let secrecy prevail today, at immense cost to Americans' privacy."
"We depend on the courts to hold the government to account, especially when it wields powerful new technologies to peer into our lives like never before. But the Supreme Court has again allowed the executive branch to hide abuses behind unjustifiable claims of secrecy," he continued. "It is now up to Congress to insist on landmark reforms that will safeguard Americans in the face of the NSA's mass spying programs."
In a series of tweets about the case, the ACLU asserted that "we all deserve to use the internet without fear of being monitored by the government" and by declining to hear the case, "the court has slammed shut one of the only doors left to hold the NSA accountable for surveillance abuses revealed in 2013" by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
That thread concluded with a call for Congress to kill Section 702—which Snowden himself echoed on the platform:
\u201cThe @ACLU is exactly right, here. Call Congress.\u201d— Edward Snowden (@Edward Snowden) 1677007904
Alex Abdo, litigation director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, joined them in urging action from U.S. lawmakers.
"This decision is a blow to the rule of law," Abdo said of the high court. "The government has now succeeded in insulating from public judicial review one of the most sweeping surveillance programs ever enacted. If the courts are unwilling to hear Wikimedia's challenge, then Congress must step in to protect Americans' privacy by reining in the NSA's mass surveillance of the internet."
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The Government Is Already Forcing Companies to Give It Access to Our Data
Feb 27, 2016
The government wants our data, whether it's sitting on our iPhones or in transit across the Internet.
Last week, we learned that the FBI is trying to force Apple to break its security features to access data stored on an iPhone that belonged to one of the San Bernardino shooters. Many predict this would set a dangerous precedent for future cases -- and they're right. But it's important to remember that the government's appetite for data isn't limited to iPhones. In fact, this is only the latest front in the government's long-running efforts to access our data wherever it can be found.
While the country debates what kind of access the FBI should have to the devices we use daily to communicate, the NSA is already intercepting, copying, and searching through vast quantities of our communications as they travel across the Internet backbone from point A to point B. This warrantless spying, known as "Upstream" surveillance, ensnares essentially everyone's international Internet communications -- including emails, chats, text messages, and even web-browsing information. It constitutes a mass intrusion into our privacy online.
With the compelled assistance of the country's biggest telecommunications providers, such as AT&T and Verizon, the NSA conducts Upstream surveillance by tapping directly into the Internet backbone -- the high-capacity cables, switches, and routers that carry Americans' online communications. The NSA's surveillance devices are installed at backbone "chokepoints," major junctions on the Internet through which most international communications travel. After copying virtually all of the international text-based traffic, the NSA searches this traffic for key terms, called "selectors," that are associated with its thousands of targets. Critically, however, the NSA isn't just plucking out the communications of suspected terrorists or spies. Instead, it's drinking from a firehose: It's copying and searching nearly everyone's international communications, looking for information about its targets. And it does all of this without a warrant.
In other words, it's as if the NSA dispatched agents to the U.S. Postal Service's major processing centers and had them open, copy, and read the contents of everyone's international mail. If a letter contained something of interest -- for example, a reference to a phone number believed to be associated with a target -- the NSA would add the letter to its files and retain that copy for later use. Of course, the Fourth Amendment protects us from precisely this kind of general, warrantless search. The government can't simply open all of our letters to look for those that are potentially of interest to it. There's no question that this would violate the Constitution, and there's no reason to treat Americans' private Internet communications differently.
Last year, the ACLU filed a suit challenging Upstream surveillance on behalf of a coalition of educational, legal, media, and advocacy organizations, including the Wikimedia Foundation. The plaintiffs engage in sensitive international communications during their work, including with journalists, foreign government officials, victims of human rights abuses, clients, witnesses, and the hundreds of millions of people who read and edit Wikipedia. The government's dragnet surveillance of these communications undermines the privacy and confidentiality on which the plaintiffs' work depends.
The case, Wikimedia v. NSA, is now on appeal in the Fourth Circuit after the district court improperly concluded that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue because they had not plausibly alleged that the NSA was monitoring their communications. The opening brief in the appeal was filed last week, and yesterday, several other groups, including technologists, media organizations, and law professors, filed amicus briefs in support of the plaintiffs.
The surveillance state runs deep. But there's still plenty of room to fight back.
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