August 2007 – It became known that Virgil Griffith, a Caltech computation and neural-systems graduate student, had created WikiScanner, a searchable database that linked changes made by anonymous Wikipedia editors to companies and organizations from which the changes were made. The database cross-referenced logs of Wikipedia edits with publicly available records pertaining to the internet IP addresses edits were made from.[56] Griffith was motivated by the edits from the United States Congress, and wanted to see if others were similarly promoting themselves. He was particularly interested in finding scandals, especially at large and controversial corporations. He said he wanted to, "create minor public relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike (and) to see what 'interesting organizations' (which I am neutral towards) are up to."[57] He also wanted to give Wikipedia readers a tool to check edits for accuracy[56] and allow the automation and indexing of edits.[58] Most of the edits Wikiscanner found were minor or harmless,[56] but the site was mined to detect the most controversial and embarrassing instances of conflict of interest edits.[59] These instances received media coverage worldwide. Included among the accused were the Vatican,[60][61] the CIA,[56][61] the Federal Bureau of Investigation,[57] the U.S. Democratic Party's Congressional Campaign Committee,[61][62] the U.S. Republican Party,[58][62] Britain's Labour Party,[62] Britain's Conservative Party,[58] the Canadian government,[63] Industry Canada,[64] the Department of Prime Minister, Cabinet, and Defence in Australia,[65][66][67][68][69] the United Nations,[70] the United States Senate,[71] the U.S. Department of Homeland Security,[72] the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,[72] Montana Senator Conrad Burns,[56] Ohio Governor Bob Taft,[73] Prince Johan Friso and his wife Princess Mabel of the Netherlands,[74][75] the Israeli government,[76] Exxon Mobil,[77] Walmart,[56][77] AstraZeneca, Diebold,[56][58][62] Dow Chemical,[58] Disney,[63] Dell,[77] Anheuser-Busch,[78] Nestlé,[58] Pepsi, Boeing,[58] Sony Computer Entertainment,[79] EA,[80] SCO Group,[78] MySpace,[58] Pfizer,[72] Raytheon,[72] DuPont,[81] Anglican and Catholic churches,[58] the Church of Scientology,[58][63] the World Harvest Church,[73] Amnesty International,[58] the Discovery Channel,[58] Fox News,[62][82] CBS, The Washington Post, the National Rifle Association of America,[58] News International,[58] Al Jazeera,[72] Bob Jones University,[72] and Ohio State University.[73] Although the edits correlated with known IP addresses, there was no proof that the changes actually came from a member of the organization or employee of the company, only that someone had access to their network.[61] Wikipedia spokespersons received WikiScanner positively, noting that it helped prevent conflicts of interest from influencing articles[57] as well as increasing transparency[61] and mitigating attempts to remove or distort relevant facts.[58] In 2008 Griffith released an updated version of WikiScanner called WikiWatcher, which also exploited a common mistake made by users with registered accounts who accidentally forget to log in, revealing their IP address and subsequently their affiliations.[83] As of March 2012, WikiScanner's website was online, but not functioning.[84]