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Russian Whistleblower Cop On YouTube
AHuxley notes a series of YouTube videos that have gone viral in Russia, in which senior police officer Alexei Dymovsky — in full uniform — details police corruption and calls on Vladimir Putin to act. "[Dymovsky says:] 'Maybe you don't know about us, about simple cops, who live and work and love their work. I'm ready to tell you everything. I'm not scared of my own death. I will show you the life of cops in Russia, how it is lived, with all the corruption and all the rest – with ignorance, rudeness, recklessness, with honest officers killed because they have stupid bosses.' His series of three 2-to-7-minute long videos released over the past week have together garnered 1 million hits on YouTube, and have spread across Russia. Dymovsky was promptly fired after the clips spread across the Internet, and a local prosecutor has opened an investigation into libel. An interior ministry source accused him of working for foreign agents and hinted that the format of Dymovsky's complaint was a problem, using a medium that remains largely free of government control." It's best to visit the Global Post link with NoScript and Flashblock enabled. Here's a Google cache link in case it's needed.
...I only hope that his courage is somehow rewarded.
Whether he accomplishes anything out of this or not, the guy is still a hero in my book. Someone do a wikipedia article on him quick :)
and hinted that the format of Dymovsky's complaint was a problem, using a medium that remains largely free of government control.
This from the "people who completely miss the point" department. If government control was working so well, this officer would have had no reason not to stay within the (ahem!) "proper" channels.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I doubt much will come of this. Putin is a putz.
Except, a ridiculous number of deaths and other shady activities have resulted from similar criticism under Putin (e.g., journalists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_Russia#Under_Putin) And of course, Ukrainian politicians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yushchenko#Dioxin_poisoning) and defectors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko#Illness_and_poisoning). This policeman's prosecution and/or death are imminent. . .
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This blown way out of proportion by the media. Most cops in russia are corrupt and everyone in russia knows that. Where is the news here?
Problem -> reaction -> solution?..
Or just a media clusterf*k?
My guess, they still don't know how to apply this.
What's interesting is that the story originated from a closed digg-like community "Leprosorium". Then the russian MSM picked it up like its a fcking golden egg. Now slashdot? wtf?
He leaves Russia asap!
Corruption may indeed be so common as to be considered the norm. It should never be viewed with complacency. Here is a man with morals and ethics who is speaking out. I for one would hope that his actions will bring about some kind of change for the better. The only given here is that it will be a long and hard fought battle on all fronts.
Some people are only alive because it's against the law for me to hunt them down and kill them.
I dunno man, living on an entirely different continent, I am very concerned over my IP being logged by viewing a few damn YouTube videos from Russia. I better install Tor as well and go down to Starbucks with a brand new netbook, just in case.
...may he rest in peace
Putin may not do anything about it, but the first rule of dictators is you have to keep enough of the people happy. Stalin managed to do it: despite killing millions of his own people, the ones who survived did have their lives improved. Though granted it's not hard to have your life improved compared to life under the Tzars.
Everyone knows Putin fixed the election, but most didn't care because they were happy enough to have him in there. But the fact that this got a million views so quickly like that is a suggestion that there is some real dissatisfaction among the Russian people. If Putin doesn't manage to find some way to make sure enough people are happy, then his regime will end, as surely as the regimes of dictators around the world have ended, whether they have fixed the election or not.
Of course, making the people happy could be as simple as oil prices rising again and Putin using the money from the increased revenues to pay his policemen more and invest in social programs, which is what Chavez has managed to do.
Qxe4
Just want to know what would happen if a NY cop were to do the exact same thing, if he would have a job the following day?
Seems like good intention that was doomed from the start. No police force would allow this officer to continue his job. Its unfortunate but true.
As for corruption, my family works work in the restaurant business and my uncle works in construction in the NYC area, they can tell you all you need to know about buying city inspectors and cops on the take.
And that's not even going into politics... oy!
Isn't it a running joke about how bad the Russian police force is? Seems like any interior or exterior complaint through the expected media doesn't do a damn thing.
Oh yeah, preface that with "In Soviet Russia."
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
The point is he does not want to quit. He want to improve things, and is doing something about it.
The Russian society (the FSU society) is sick. I speak from experience. But it is starting to heal. The Internet is a part of it.
And why he has to work on Saturdays without a pay? It is a present-ism.
We learned from you, you learned from us. It is not a good thing.
The US economy is strong because there are a lot of good honest people in America. If the corruption in the US becomes rampant, like in the FSU, it will be a bad thing for every one.
Corruption didn't disappear with the advent of Putin. He only makes big, theatrical gestures, but has no interest in fighting corruption, because it is this corrupt system that is his lifeline. I've learned years ago, that journalists are the *only* true force opposed to corruption. I come from an ex-communist country where corruption is rampant (and I hate it there, because I can't stand that corruption, so I'll never go back), but the few bright lights of hope are the journalists who uncover schemes and collusions - and then bear the consequences.
Well, in Russia these lights are all but quenched. Putin's regime has dealt with journalists so brutally, the few that aren't dead just fell into line.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
No corruption is allready rife in the US - we just promote the most corrupt to ceo's and those with lesser talent for corruption to Congress etc.
i had to cry watching this.
I dunno man, living on an entirely different continent, I am very concerned over my IP being logged by viewing a few damn YouTube videos from Russia. I better install Tor as well and go down to Starbucks with a brand new netbook, just in case.
No Script and Flashblock don't help if you're running flash anyway.
It's potentially more than the video, watching that using flash puts for all practical purposes a backdoor on the computers of an interesting group, especially those within Russia. Idiots that use flash and javascript are almost as bad as the ones that set up sites to depend on them for operation. Again, this is a case where using open standards would not just help get the message out but help protect the identities, interests, and machine integrity of those receiving the message.
Basically there is a severe show-stopper every few weeks. Here's a 1 minute search, taking longer to post here than to find in Google:
2009: Flash Origin Policy Issues
2009 also: New attacks exploit vuln in (fully-patched) Adobe Flash: Browse and get owned
2008: Adobe Flash exploit raises concern
2007: Serious Flash vulns menace at least 10,000 websites
There's plenty more where that came from. Again, it was 1 minute of searching.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I seriously hope this guy knows to call the A Team for protection, because he is going to need it.
If the editors are going to advice us against visiting TFA, they might as well have provided some more detail in TFS as well as a direct link to YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4vB2a15dOU
This cop dude has a website: http://dymovskiy.ru/
Please don't /. it (it's in Russia anyways), use Google translation to english instead.
or: http://dymovskiy.ru/video/1.avi
http://dymovskiy.ru/video/2.avi
The Russian president just gave his state of the nation address, and suprised some with his calls to prosecute and end corruption, modernize and privatize industry, and strengthen democracy. This police officer may be speaking out, at least partly, because of what the president had to say.
You 'd better make sure that you paid cash for your netbook. Did you wear a ski mask in the store?
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
Starting to heal???
I'm a Finn. I've been waiting that for more than I've been living (small exaggeration is needed in this case), which makes half a century.
Let me tell you a story. I once went to Soviet Union and got out of Russia. The people in there, when I told the historic event I heard from radio, said "nothing is going to change".
And, boy, were they right!
Come on, you're talking about ancient history. The 70s? That was the Soviet Union!
What about Alexander Litvienenko? He fled Russia in 2000, was granted asylum in the UK in October 2006, and by November 2006 he was murdered. The killers used a radioactive isotope that would not have been available to the average crazy on the street -- clearly sending a message.
Breakfast served all day!
I think the point that people miss is that every country has some degree of corruption, but it is what levels it is active at and how they deal with that corruption that is important.
In the US, what we might term "corruption" in the sense of favoritism (or deviations from a US sense of "meritocracy") tend to occur at the very local level (small town nepotism, "networking", etc), or at the more rarefied levels of government and business (quod pro quos from both of the political parties, lobbying, the kind of no-bid blackwater/Halliburton sort of think, insider trading, etc). This isn't to say that corruption at the top is not a problem (in fact, it is much more influential in the long run than corruption at the bottom), but simply in the US it tends to be limited to the upper reaches of government and finance.
In many other countries, the striking contrast to this is corruption in the middle, in addition to the top and bottom. Getting a job is basically impossible in some countries without appropriate connections, bribery is rampant and expected for basic "government provided" services, public works are often mired in those same problems of bribery (not scratching enough backs, etc). Even worse is when the guardians of civil society, the police, are dangerous to approach and more often on the side of criminals, as in Russia.
The other major dividing line is the public reaction to exposure of corruption. In societies where corruption is most widespread, "revelations" are generally shrugged off (and have been probably more widely known prior to their revelation), whereas in less corrupt economies, there is at least some backlash against corruption, rather than simple apathy or active suppression. Being a whistleblower in the US can be bad for your job. Being a whistleblower in other countries (as shown by many of the posts pointing out other instances where political opponents have been assassinated, etc) can result in indefinite incarceration and torture, perhaps with an "accidental" death in prison.
The advent of youtube, on the other hand, gives a voice to those who would be otherwise suppressed. Take the story of Imad Kabir, an Egyptian taxi driver. He was arrested (without charges) for participating in a fight. He was subsequently sodomized with a broomstick, which was video taped by the perpetrators. They were so sure of their immunity that they showed it to his co-workers, perhaps as a warning. When Kabir initially complained, he was actually prosecuted and jailed for assaulting an officer (dating back to his original assault arrest), but as the youtube video spread on various blogs, the officers were finally arrested. Without the internet, the officers who tortured Kabir probably would still be doing that kind of shit. Even the people who did post it to their blogs were threatened by the authorities.
"An interior ministry source accused him of working for foreign agents"
Oh, yes. Because it's so unbelievable that police could become corrupt in any country, or that there might be police willing to speak out about it. Especially in Russia. It's so much more plausible that an agent of some foreign country put them up to it. That must be it. Corruption? What corruption. There's no corruption in Russia.
Instead of being in denial, or blaming everyone else for it, how about dealing with the problem?
If you want to go far back in time, Trostky is a more well known example.
How so? I am given to understand he was prone to piercing headaches and died as a result thereof.
If you want to go far back in time, Trostky is a more well known example.
How so? I am given to understand he was prone to piercing headaches and died as a result thereof.
You sir, are a fool or a very good troll given Trotsky's death and his experience with "piercing headaches": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky#Assassination In either case, I salute you!
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I think you are forgetting that the man is appealing to Putin, not against him, and very respectfully, too. It's an old Russian tradition - to appeal to the czar against evil officials. Putin rather likes playing rescuer, swooping in and punishing the evildoers. So it may well turn out allright for him.
And don't forget to check your coffee for the traces of Polonium.
He will probably do fine. He is enjoying media attention right now and has a strong populist appeal. He got offered a meeting with the Minister of the Internal Affairs, and refused: he wants an audience with Putin. And he is not a kind of a whistle-blower who exposes a particular case of corruption, he mostly talks about how militsia (police) sucks, how it's ineffecient, does not protect people, does not reward its own employees. What drove him to the edge, in his own words, is also telling:
He has a [6-yo] step-daughter Diana. She has a computer. And his own computer broke. He needed to do some urgent job -- something with narcotics. He asked to use his daughter's computer. She gave it to him, of course, and he brought the computer to work. For a few days it was used by the staff to work with documents. Then his daughter asked for her computer back, and they went to get it together. "Me and my daughter are walking down the hall. I have the monitor and she has the wires. We meet my boss, and he says: where are you taking the computer? I explained that it was my daughter's and I am taking it home. He nodded and we left the building and went to a bus stop. Then the inventory guy cought up with us and started yelling that we need to take the computer back. 'You don't have the right to take it out! Where are the documents about entry?' They took the computer and told me to get an official statement. All of this was very unpleasant, especially because the humiliation in front of the daughter."
http://echo.msk.ru/blog/video/634214-echo/
It's a big drama about a clueless cop who got fed up by rules and regulations and went on to rant mostly about shitty working conditions and insufficient compensation. And drama is just what Russians like instead of actual politics, so I predict great things for this guy.
Wow. Talk about swallowing the propaganda.
Go take a look at reality sometime. Visit your local council. Take a look at the nepotism, the corruption, the incompetence, the arse covering, the back scratching.
This is what government *is*, not what it's supposed to be or might theoretically be. National government is exactly the same, only *MUCH* bigger. How much exactly has the government enslaved future generations for? Who did they give it to?
The difference in Russia is there is less hypocrisy and more shooting. So I doubt they missed the point at all. They were just being clear what the point is.
Deleted
You may indeed be right; it would be difficult to make him disappear as long as he's something of a celebrity. It would look bad, at the very least.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
"On August 20, 1940, Trotsky was attacked in his home in Mexico by a NKVD agent, Ramón Mercader, who buried the pick of an ice axe into Trotsky's skull." That sounds like a piercing headache to me.
Lives improved????
I don't know what kind of lies they're teaching you, but that is just flat out wrong in every way.
Repressions and famines occurring in the Soviet Union under the regimes of Lenin and Stalin described in the Black Book of Communism include:
* the executions of tens of thousands of hostages and prisoners, and the murder of hundreds of thousands of rebellious workers and peasants from 1918 to 1922 (See also: Red Terror)
* the Russian famine of 1921, which caused the death of 5 million people
* the extermination and deportation of the Don Cossacks in 1920
* the murder of tens of thousands in concentration camps in the period between 1918 and 1930
* the Great Purge which killed almost 690,000 people
* the deportation of 2 million so-called "kulaks" from 1930 to 1932
* the deaths of 4 million Ukrainians (Holodomor) and 2 million others during the famine of 1932 and 1933
* the deportations of Poles, Ukrainians, Moldavians and people from the Baltic Republics from 1939 to 1941 and from 1944 to 1945
* the deportation of the Volga Germans in 1941
* the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1943
* the deportation of the Chechens in 1944
* the deportation of the Ingush in 1944.(p. 9-10) (See also: Population transfer in the Soviet Union)
The Black Book of Communism
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Did you even read my post, or are you knee-jerking to try to show off your knowledge of the topic? Yes, Stalin was bad. Millions of people suffered. But that in no way contradicts what I said in my post.
Russia basically went from a third-world country to a world super-power, at one point even winning the space race. Education was free, there was no unemployment. For the people who remained, as long as they kept their mouth shut, life wasn't bad.
Russia was built up in many ways on the back of slave labor. And yet, here is the crucial point: most people weren't slaves. Most people learned to keep their mouths shut. Most people did ok.
Go read Machiavelli. It is ok for a dictator to oppress a minority in order to favor the majority, but it is essential to keep the populace happy enough. Dictators around the world have shown that if you don't learn this lesson, you will not be in power for long. If Putin fails at that, he will be deposed one way or another.
Qxe4
If he should lose the legal fight against the local and national governments of Russia, I will contribute money to any effort helping him to flee Russia.
Most of us Slashdotters are arm-chair political analysts opining about the world. We should get out of our chairs and -- this time -- make a difference in that world. Let us stop talking. Let us start doing. We should help this guy.
He probably took it in because they have no budget to buy new ones...the part where it's made clear that he's not the only one using it is pretty telling. People were probably freaking out because it was the only working machine in the office.
Just want to know what would happen if a NY cop were to do the exact same thing, if he would have a job the following day?
Bullshit. You claim to live in NY, yet you know nothing of unions? Especially the police unions. If they can keep people on even though they took bribes, they could surely do it for complaining about them.
woosh!
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
your basic local cop is usually not corrupt.
True ... but among those basic uncorrupted officials are some serious assholes. But that's another story.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Yes, improved.
You see, the Tzars were far worse than anything Stalin ever did, and for much, much longer, but Western history (for reasons purely coincidental - I am sure, ha!) somehow neglects to highlight (never you mind to trumpet from every roof, like it does with the Communist abuses) their countless purges, mass exterminations, internal deportations and endless famines, combined with an occasional idiotic war for some royal cousin's pride, all while maintaining a system of utter slavery where 90%+ population lived in hovels as de-facto property of the less then 1%.
That is why the Revolution occurred. If the majority of Russians were not so oppressed and abused, the Communists would have found little fertile ground for their ideology to grow, but Russia was the place where the majority despaired under the yoke of their "betters". And so that majority of Russians supported the Reds. And the rest is history.
In Soviet Russia, YOU tube THE POLICE