Hack the Olympics!

There's been some widely publicized controversy regarding the competition age of the Chinese women's gymnastics team recently. Rather than be too CNN, I decided to take a page from my friend Johnny and investigate on my own. I have an Internet connection, that means I should be able to verify the age of the gymnasts in question with primary state-issued documents and find out for myself if someone's cheating, right? Right. Let's go to work.

First, the rules.

1. Gymnasts must be 16 to compete. This means they must be born in 1992 or earlier.
2. Only publicly available, primary, linkable information can be used.

Who are we talking about?

Let's take a look at He Kexin (何可欣). Her Chinese issued passport lists her birthday as 01/01/1992, 16 years old and old enough to compete. However, allegations cited on her Wikipedia page put her birthday as 01/01/1994, fourteen years old and not eligible for competition. Which is the truth? Let's find out.

Let's ask Google!

First, we'll search all Chinese web sites for Excel spreadsheets containing He Kexin's name and the word 1994. (site:cn 何可欣 filetype:xls 1994). This seems like a pretty good search. Try it yourself! Here's what Google gives us back, one measly hit:

Wow, an Excel spreadsheet hosted on an official Chinese government web site (http://www.sport.gov.cn/files/jts/reg2006/zctc.xls) that contains the official birthday for He Kexin, awesome! Unfortunately, when you click on it, it's been removed.

That's strange. Fortunately, we can click on "View as HTML" in the Google cache and see it. However, even though the Google search results indicate that He Kexin is listed in the spreadsheet, when you view Google's cached version, her name no longer appears.

What a strange software bug!?!? Oh well, I guess we should give up. Right?

What if we don't give up easy though?

What about Baidu? Baidu is a Chinese language search engine with its own cache and search index. It's different than google. So what if we run the same search on Baidu? Here's the Baidu results, as of today, for the same search string: (site:cn 何可欣 filetype:xls 1994). For those who don't speak Search Engine, that's all Excel spreadsheets in China that contain He Kexin's name and the string 1994. So, here's Baidu:

Interesting. Baidu lists TWO spreadsheets at sport.gov.cn with Kexin's name. Not surprisingly, the new one discovered by Baidu has been been deleted as well:

But what about the Baidu cache? If you click on the "HTML" link next to these XLS documents on Baidu (do it yourself!) you can access a cached copy of the document. This means that it was fully available... until recently. So, does Baidu's copies of these documents have anything to say about Ms. Kexin?

In the Baidu cache, which apparently has not been hit with the scrub brush (yet), two spreadsheets published by the Chinese government on sport.gov.cn both list He Kexin's birthday as 01-01-1994, making her 14 years old. For as long as these links work, you can access the documents directly, either using the directions and screenshots above, or these links: cache1 cache2

Conclusions

How official are these documents? Pretty dang official - they were issued by the General Administration of Sport of China.

Much of the coverage regarding Kexin's age has only mentioned "allegations" of fraud, and the IOC has ignored the matter completely. I believe that these primary documents, issued by the Chinese state, directly available from China by clicking on the links above rise to a level of evidence higher than "allegation". The following points bear mentioning:

1. Google's cached copy of the spreadsheet does not contain Kexin's age record, and Baidu's does. This does not necessarily imply that Google allowed its data to be rewritten by Chinese censors, but the possibility does present itself.
2. From the minute I pressed the publish button on this blog, the clock is ticking until Kexin's true age is wiped out of the Baidu cache forever. It is up to you, the folks reading this blog, to take your own screenshots and notarize them by publishing them. If you put a link in the comments section, I'll post it.

In closing, I'd like to point out that this is not an anti-China post; far from it. While I may disagree with the effort the Chinese government is making to conceal this young woman's age, I have the utmost respect for the Chinese people, and I believe that united they will be able to make state sponsored censorship a thing of the past.

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Update 8/27/2008

• It seems that most of the traffic to this blog is still coming here, to the original post. I'd like to point out for the record, this is the first blog post I've ever written in my life. I did my best. That said, there's now a lot more to the story. Please visit http://strydehax.blogspot.com.


• One side bar to this post that keeps getting picked up is my statement that censors could have had access to the search engine results. It remains true that this is possible, or at least I cannot disprove it. However, it is very important to note that documents disappearing from web servers is very different from results leaving a search engine. Results "time out" and naturally remove themselves from search engines all the time; this is a natural artifact of how the technology works. Hence I cannot in any way state that there is evidence that information is being intentionally removed from search engines. When I was writing this, it seemed like everything I clicked on had already been deleted; in retrospect, it's important to differentiate between missing documents on web servers (which is highly suspicious) and missing search engine results, which can simply be an artifact of the search engine catching up. I hope this clarifies things.

Update 8/22/2008

• Referred to this story directly? Please see the rest of my blog, as I attempt to follow up in real time: strydehax.blogspot.com


• Many readers have pointed out mistakes in this posting, including my use of the phrase "Ms. Kexin", which is incorrect (the correct name order dictates the phrase "Ms. He". I have decided not to modify my original posting. If I go back and change my mistakes, how can I comment honestly on the topic of online redaction?


• I've recently been alerted to this excellent Huffington Post article which uses screenshots of primary sources regarding He Kexin. This is the type of reporting I was originally looking for! One guy can't read everything. Tip o' the hat.

Update 8/20/2008

• New to the story? Check out Part II


• Well, this has hit Slashdot and appears to have legs. I am approving comments as fast as I can; bear with me


• Readers in the comment section have noted that I misspelled Ms. Kexin's name as Hexin; corrected


• I have received several comments to the effect of "Who cares how old she is?". In response: certainly not me. This blog is about government censorship and state sponsored fraud. I am attempting to demonstrate the power of free citizens to subvert government censorship. The finer points of gymnastics competitions are outside the scope of this post.


• An alert reader has alerted me that perhaps the New York Times was the first to run across these documents, in their story here. In fact, it may have been visits by the NY Times reporter to the official web site that originally caused the Excel spreadsheets to be deleted. I find it unfortunate that at the time the NYTimes did not 'notarize' and redistribute the primary documents when they were found, if this is the case. Either way, it appears readers of this blog have taken up the torch. The truth isn't going to be stamped out.


• I am amazed at the outpouring of technical support and mirrors contributed by readers in order to preserve these records. I will continue to post every one I receive; thank you.


• I can be reached privately via stryde dot blog at gmail dot com