CIA torture report: US government computers editing out 'torture' references from Wikipedia page

Attempts to remove a description of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques as an "euphemism for torture" from the Senate Intelligence Committee report's Wikipedia page have been made from a US government computer.

There have been at least two attempts from an anonymous Wikipedia editor using a computer with a registered IP address inside the US Senate

Both times – on 9 December and 10 December – the user attempted to remove the line describing the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques as "a euphemism for torture" on the basis of bias.

The edits were made following the release of the damming report, known as the CIA torture report, which revealed the full extent of the "brutal" interrogation methods the agency used on terror suspects in the wake of 9/11.

The anonymous edits were picked by the Twitter account @congressedits, a bot which tweets every time an edit has been made to a Wikipedia article using computers registered at Congress.

The account was based on @parliamentedits, which tracks Wikipedia edits made from inside Parliament.

At the time of publication, the edited line from the Wikipedia page now reads: "The CIA Torture Report is a report compiled by the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)'s Detention and Interrogation Program using various forms of torture (known in US government communiqués as 'enhanced interrogation techniques')".