The InformNapalm international volunteer community has gained a landslide victory in the dispute over ‘confidentiality’, which broke out last week after the publication of photos and video evidence of the participation of an employee of the Russian Federal Service for Execution of Punishment (FSEP) in combat actions in Donbas.

You can get acquainted with the investigation results here: “Hackers Exposed a Russian Federal Service for Execution Operative. Video 18+“

The investigation has caused a considerable stir in media, and the video was viewed by more than 80 000 people already in the first days after the publication (apart from showing it on TV channels which cover hundreds of thousands of viewers).

But the real surprise was the reaction of Nikolai Reichenau, the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service operative, to this publication of the facts of his participation in the war on the territory of Ukraine. He filed a ‘confidentiality’ complaint on the video posted on the InformNapalm community’s official YouTube-channel demanding its removal. Similar complaints were received by other official channels which had slides from the video in their news stories.

It was stated in the message from YouTube’s administration that InformNapalm was given 48 hours for a decision on removal of the video or editing it for the purpose of anonymization of the investigation figurant.

Are 48 hours enough for making the right decision about retreat or counterattack? We carried out a series of consultations with the readers who have a law degree, but almost all of them argued that we had almost no chances and the ‘confidentiality’ complaint, filed by the FSEP employee, was likely to be satisfied.

But the InformNapalm international community does not negotiate with terrorists, even with the state level ones, and does not believe that their ‘right for confidentiality’ can have a higher priority than the right of every citizen of Ukraine and the world community to know the terrorists by sight and get incontrovertible evidence of their crimes. It was decided to conduct a social survey on Facebook among the readers of our site to find legislative and regulatory documents, links to which can tip the balance in favor of our community.

And already in the first hours of the survey, we received a number of interesting links to legislation and documents on the basis of which we prepared our answer to YouTube’s administration, and presented counter arguments proving inadmissibility of changing or deleting the InformNapalm’s video.

You can find the full text of our answer here: “An Open Letter to YouTube: A Terrorist of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service Filed a Complaint for ‘Breach of Confidentiality’“

And yesterday, on March 8, after a long consideration, YouTube’s administration sent us its decision: “… the mentioned content does not violate our rules regarding the confidentiality and will not be removed”.

This can be considered as a precedent of real collective victory. Thanks to the public resonance and brainstorming of hundreds of people, we managed to find the right solution in a seemingly hopeless situation. The military would call it ‘network-centric warfare’ – improving the combat capabilities by achieving Infocommunication superiority, but we call it ‘swarm tactics’ with the help of which InformNapalm effectively stings and burns the enemy on the information battlefield.

We thank all those who, together with us, was looking for a solution and facilitated the dissemination of information in social networks, media and at the nodal points of decision-making.

Our investigation, which was based on the materials provided by the #FF (Falcons Flame) anonymous hacker group, has been translated into 8 languages, and the video clip assembled from the investigation materials already has English, Ukrainian, Czech and German subtitles.

Spread this information in social networks and media with all means available. It really burns the enemy and brings us closer to overall victory!

Original article translated by Stepan Grishin