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Comment by kunstmord | Hacker News Reader

>As of this year Putin is now requiring bloggers to register if they have a certain number of readers, so that his administration can curtail international misinformation.

Yeah, totally, and not because the massive protests in late 2011-early 2012 were partly organized by a blogger/activist. Some of these attempts at what you call "preventing NSA/other evil foreign agency collecting our citizen's data" are more like "let's prevent them from using Facebook/Google/etc., force them to switch to our networks where we can happily get the data ourselves". Which is probably what's going to happen here in Russia in 2016.

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This is a fallacy of the excluded middle. If the blogger was in fact a domestic blogger (was it?), it can in fact be both about domestic efforts to organize and international influence.

The United States and allies have other ways of handling domestic movements, like Fusion Centers and Free Speech Zones (in the US) and partnerships and leverage on media providers.

Meanwhile as an american I can freely watch russia today on youtube, read presstv without a proxy, and hang out on conspiracy websites like globalresearch.ca and infowars.com.

Maybe I'm just a dumb american but at least my protectionist nannystate allows me to watch the "bad" tv channels.

I'm just reminded of a quote from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri:

"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."

To some degree.

The US government nudges public opinion (Fallujah PsyOp, Judith Miller, Ken Dilanian, operation MOCKINGBIRD, purposeful placement of objective aligned messages on international media lines, "Heroes in Error", partners with astroturfing services/HBGary).

It breeds capabilities to influence individuals and groups (NSA JTRIG, GCHQ BIRDSONG/BADGER/GATEWAY/SLIPSTREAM/ETC, MINERVA) and will wield capabilities to track and target information to groups in limited circumstances ("The Cave").

It also will quiet groups, even if they are domestic, that significantly challenge the stability or justifiability of the nation/system/structure (COINTELPRO, MINARET, Fusion Centers).

You say that as if the US plans the same freedoms given to it's citizens extended to regimes it disagrees with. You can watch everything freely because there's no antagonistic hugely powerful and apt state effectively able to spy on all US citizens and take undercover measures to destabilize the US. I'm not saying I agree with this or that regime, but to me it's clear that the US can be very liberal because it doesn't feel threatened technologically.

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