A few comments from the perspective of having worked in and around tech for over a quarter century, much of it involving data acquisition and analysis (largely industry, not government).

First: the "loser edit" isn't just about video, it's about any narrative -- text, images, audio, video -- and how it can be construed. There's a reason I've enshrined the infamous words of Cardinal Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu et de Fronsac, on my G+ Profile: "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged."

For an example I rather admire, see this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/15o08h/redditors...

Second: Sensors and storage are proliferating like mad. If earlier ages were largely notable for how much wasn't noted (as in: recorded in any fashion), the present age will be notable for how much that is noted is never accessed. How many hours of YouTube video are uploaded every minute?[1] Which means there's a tremendous trove available for mining.

Third: Search of non-textual data is becoming vastly more effective. Being able to first utilize metadata to restrict your search space helps, but as Google is demonstrating, the ability to describe video and search for it is pretty scary.

All of which means that the ability to collect, edit, and distribute a narrative which trashes any given individual, with their own writings, images, spoken word, and video, is tremendously high. We've been seeing that in the area of political discourse as a growing factor over the past decade or two: Declan McCullaghs false story of Al Gore's role in developing the Internet (Gore did play a significant role in establishing legislative support[2]), the Dean Scream ("In a nutshell, you are not seeing that Dean's speech fit the tone of the room."[3]), or in the past few weeks, John Travolta's "awkward" kiss[4] -- a single instant gives a much different view than the context in which it occurred.

Which is a point that media commentators have been making for a long time: that information devoid of context isn't meaningful. See Neal Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death[5]. Written in 1985, it includes a very Twitter-ish sounding description of randomly-arriving extremely short decontextualized texts -- the telegraph wire. There's a story behind the term "telegraphic".

And there's a fifth point as well: with a putatively comprehensive record, it's quite possible to either bluff or fabricate stories, with increased credibility. While that's a timeless tactic itself -- I believe it was during the second Presidential campaign in the United States, supporters of John Adams spread the rumor that Jefferson had died (or vice versa) -- it was a profoundly dirty campaign.[6] But with an archive, it's possible to claim, or fabricate, or construe a story that is very, very, very difficult to refute or combat.

And that's going to be a growing problem going forward.

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Notes:

1. It's 300 hours per minute: http://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html

2. "[F]ormer Vice-President Al Gore never claimed that he "invented" the Internet, nor did he say anything that could reasonably be interpreted that way." http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp

3. "Dean's Scream: Not What It Seemed" http://www.cbsnews.com/news/deans-scream-not-what-it-seemed/

4. http://fixyt.com/watch?v=bY9YMGM-hm

5. http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9780143036531-1

6. http://www.lehrmaninstitute.org/history/1800.html