Russian Olympic official to reporters: stop complaining about hotels or we'll release CCTV footage of you in the bathroom

Step 1: Create performance in Sochi hotel bathroom, including placards promoting your dot-com
Step 2: Write press release about the poor conditions at the hotel and wait for Olympic officials to air the footage
Step 3: Profit!

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What’s so threatening about a video of a running shower pointed toward a wall that they didn’t just show it during the press conference to “prove” how awful the western tourists have been in their precious new hotels?

Where’s the threat?

It’s only a threat if they have video of the guests in the rooms.

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I believe in the power of imagination. I also believe in not representing my imagination as fact. The headline on this article makes it look like the official actually said, “Stop complaining or we release the tapes.” If Cory imagined that, he should say so.

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From the original WSJ article:

Dmitry Kozak, the deputy prime minister responsible for the Olympic preparations, seemed to reflect the view held among many Russian officials that some Western visitors are deliberately trying to sabotage Sochi's big debut out of bias against Russia. "We have surveillance video from the hotels that shows people turn on the shower, direct the nozzle at the wall and then leave the room for the whole day," he said. An aide then pulled a reporter away before Mr. Kozak could be questioned further on surveillance in hotel rooms. "We're doing a tour of the media center," the aide said.

Why did the aide have to pull the reporter away, and quickly switch the subject to another topic? Seems the aide knew Kozak had given away too much intel.

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The bigger question in my mind is: how the hell is wasting some “water” (I’m using the term loosely here as potability has been in question for a while now.) equivalent to evidence of sabotaging the Olympic games? This guy is severely brain damaged if he thinks that’s a convincing argument. Maybe he should switch from vodka to this “water”. Unless it’s actually the Russians themselves who’ve sabotaged the games and are making asses of themselves.

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On-topic: The Sochi hotel surveillance situation, including whether “We have surveillance video from the hotels that shows people turn on the shower, etc” justifies the widespread interpretation that there is hotel surveillance, surveillance footage, and the implicit possibility of its release, etc.

Start a new thread: general discussion of Boing Boing’s essential nature, blogging vs news, humorous/hyperbolic headlines vs. pedants/aspies, etc.

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If I were staying in one of those hotels, I might actually turn the shower on and leave it running, in the hope that eventually the beer-colored brown stuff reportedly coming out of the pipes would be washed out of the system and I’d actually have water that looked like water and didn’t have to have warning labels about not getting it on your face or drinking it. And if it didn’t clear quickly and the shower noise became part of ambient background noise, I might forget it was still running and leave the room without turning it off.

So I can believe hotel staff might have found one or two showers or faucets left running. It’s a far cry from that to accusations of “sabotage”, though.

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I agree. I was joking.

I was thinking the same thing. I run the kitchen faucet for a while before filling water bottles for the kids if it’s the first running water of the day.

Why Russia, that’s pretty gay.

Say it’s surveillance footage that actually shows people turning on the shower, directing the nozzle at the wall, and then leaving.

That’s awful, obviously. Both sides look bad, but the Russians look MORE bad.

Now, say it’s surveillance footage somebody took showing that the shower is on and directed at the wall. Let’s say it’s multiple cases, because otherwise it just means nothing at all other than that one guy (or lady) is an idiot.

This could prove either a) there are multiple journalists turning on water in the showers, directing the nozzle at a wall, in their own hotel rooms, then leaving for a whole day so they could have something to complain about.

Or, b) that maintenance staff has been instructed to go into people’s rooms, turn on the shower, direct the nozzle at the wall, and take video of this in an effort to make it look like this is a conspiracy against Russia.

Either might be true. NEITHER might be true.

But of the two options, given everything else that’s going wrong there, I’m putting more money on Option B.

The Russians are filming people in the bathroom. This is a fact. Putin said so. Stop pretending he did not.

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It all depends on the nozzle direction. Which way was the nozzle pointed? Have we got more reports on which way the nozzle pointed?

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The headline on this article makes it look like the official actually said, “Stop complaining or we release the tapes.”

He did say it and there’s even a film in the works on it.

I’m sorry, but did he actually say anything that constitutes a threat of releasing those videos?

Yes.

There is no need to turn this into a tabloid piece.

Sorry, but that’s off-topic.

What damage is wasting water likely to have in the first place (on a level that it would affect the games or their reputation, at least)? Why would people even want to do it? If this is something that people do at Sochi and that needs to be stopped, surely installing a water meter and recording that would be better evidence? There’s a lot about this story that doesn’t make much sense.

50/50 chance it’s author clarity. Just sayin’

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Perhaps if the headline weren’t such a blatant lie being passed off as truth in what is supposed to be a journalistic setting, we wouldn’t need to discuss Boing Boing’s essential nature. Change the headline to “Russian official admits that they are spying on people in the shower” and you’ve still got a shocking headline…that’s actually true.
Hell, you can even add something about the “implicit possibility of release” instead of making it an “explicit threat of release.”
If you want to be treated like journalists and taken seriously, you need to follow better journalistic standards than Fox News.
I have enormous respect for Boing Boing and Mr. Doctorow and I am truly disappointed to see what is, essentially, muckraking, no matter how deserving of muckraking the target may be.

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Do you know what the word “damning” means? Do the words “the truth is already plenty damning” not constitute a meaningful sentence? I’m utterly at a loss as to how anyone could read that and think “gosh, he must be 100% behind everything Kozak says or does.”

https://shop.boingboing.net/product/Demolish-Serious-Culture

We manufacture those, by the way.

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