Here is some telling history from an article about Russia’s approach to media control and its “rage” against YouTube.
The history of media subjugation in Putin’s Russia reaches back to the early days of his regime, and to his first Press Minister, Mikhail Lesin. “I don’t agree with the thesis that the state is more dangerous to the media than the media is to the state,” he told reporters in 1999, “I believe quite the opposite.” By 2003, most major domestic media lay in the hands of state enterprises, while CNN and the BBC remained “information weapon[s]” beyond state control. Lesin countered with the establishment of Russia Today, now RT, in 2005. “It’s been a long time since I was scared by the word propaganda,” he said of his creation.
That same year saw the founding of YouTube.
The real money quote comes much later, expressing just how critical data integrity is to Russian concepts of information security:
Tens of billions of times, YouTube has brought Russian propaganda into homes worldwide and has made millions in the process. For the U.S. company, that may represent little more than a boost to growth and engagement metrics. But for the Russian government, that represents a keystone of “information security.”
Integrity is a keystone! And yet American security professionals rarely work on it, let alone build tools or try to solve for vulnerabilities.
Food for thought, given how American police have been arresting children…
…a video had appeared on YouTube… The police were at Hobgood because of that video. But they hadn’t come for the boys who threw punches. They were here for the children who looked on. The police in Murfreesboro, a fast-growing city about 30 miles southeast of Nashville, had secured juvenile petitions for 10 children in all who were accused of failing to stop the fight. Officers were now rounding up kids, even though the department couldn’t identify a single one in the video…
Information weapons. Who controls them?
Update October 18: Police are not yet arresting people caught on train surveillance video doing nothing to stop rape.
A woman was allegedly raped on a suburban Philadelphia train last week while police said there were “a lot of people” around who “should have done something.”
Police said they had arrested a man connected to the rape that allegedly happened on a SEPTA El train on Wednesday. Fishton Ngoy, 35, has been charged with rape and several other counts.
According to authorities, the incident was caught on surveillance video that showed bystanders on the train when it happened who “did nothing.”