As previously reported by the New York Times and noted in this blog (The Google Cache Strikes Again), two of the medal-winning Chinese female gymnasts are only 14 years old, according to rosters posted on Chinese web sites at the time of earlier competitions. (They have since been furnished with passports showing them now to be the minimum Olympic eligibility age of 16.) The NYT found a copy of the roster cached at Google (see pp. 124-126 of Blown to Bits for an explanation of how this works).

Now blogger Stryde Hax has found traces of incriminating rosters at the Chinese search engine Baidu — the one controlled by Chinese authorities. Links to the two cached copies are here and here — though I don’t expect they will stay visible for long, now that they are being publicized. You need to read Chinese to pick out the gymnasts’ names.

As we say in the book, search is power. And bits don’t go away.

The whole concept of truth is being shaken by developments like this. Will the IOC be able to continue to accept the word of Chinese authorities that those new passports have the girls’ real birthdates and those old records are wrong for some reason?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 2:25 pm and is filed under Search, Social computing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.