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If you found this article interesting and are curious for examples of North Korea’s extensive digital surveillance, I recommend watching “Florian Grunow, Niklau

If you found this article interesting and are curious for examples of North Korea’s extensive digital surveillance, I recommend watching “Florian Grunow, Niklaus Schiess: Lifting the Fog on Red Star OS”: https://youtu.be/8LGDM9exlZw https://youtu.be/8LGDM9exlZw The depths to which North Korea goes to track and monitor its citizens is a lot more complex than I thought (and this video is from 6 years ago, so they’ve probably only improved their surveillance)

core-utility 4y ago
On the same subject, Darknet Diaries podcast did an episode on PRK and the smuggling of "illegal" media in. It's a good listen. Episode 71: Information Monopoly https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/71/ https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/71/
- Kaibeezy 4y ago
  USBs are a significant form of sharing information in North Korea. Many citizens have devices with USB ports and SD card slots. So for many years, North Korean defectors have organized efforts to smuggle outside info into North Korea on USB drives to counter Kim Jong-un’s constant propaganda. But these groups were buying memory devices at cost with limited resources. Flash Drives For Freedom is a campaign that travels the world inspiring people to donate their own memory drives. An initiative launched and managed by the Human Rights Foundation, Flash Drives for Freedom is significantly increasing the capacities of these North Korean defector groups. https://flashdrivesforfreedom.org/ https://flashdrivesforfreedom.org/
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - giantrobot 4y ago
    Apparently the use of flash drives is due to the police shutting down power to a neighborhood and then doing raids. With a DVD player a disc would be stuck when the power is cut. So the police roll in and see you've been watching contraband and off to the dirt mines. With a flash drive you can remove it from the port and hide it even with the power out.
hammock 4y ago
Your top comment is about surveillance. However, the article is more geared towards media censorship and control. I’d like to see a conversation comparing censorship and the fight against “disinformation” in NK vs in the USA
- mc32 4y ago
  I mean, that's a basically a distinction without a difference, depending on who wields the power. Disinformation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea can be anything that goes against any official line. In the US disinformation can also be things (but not all things) that go against the official government line, v.g: Covid, elections, official promulgations, fact checks, etc. It can be difficult to mark a difference, but it's safe to say that at least as of now, fewer things would be marked disinformation in the US despite the new DHS office that would appear to ape how soviet systems (such as DPRK) would deal with what they deem misinformation.
  - atoav 4y ago
    For me the border where it starts to flip is whether branding something "disinformation" tells more about the brander or the branded. For example a Russian protester being detained for displaying an empty poster, doesn't tell us a lot about the specific believes of the person with the poster, but a lot about the people who react to such a thing by robbing that persons freedom by claiming it was desinformation (which it wasn't, it was a symbolic act of protest). On the other hand if someone claims vaccines are a evil plot to inject nanobots into our bloodstreams to track everybodies position, this would be desinformation even without any state entity ever reacting to it. It tells a lot about the believe systems and world view of the person claiming such things, but it doesn't necessarily relate a lot to actual policy out there. A third thing would be strategic denounciations like the ones the Nazis used when they coined ther term "Lügenpresse" which translates to "lie-press" or more modern: "fake media". This is used as a form of preventative denounciation. So the act of calling things disinformation before it is even clear what is said in order to weaken it's credibility once it is said and to create an incentive for their followers to only listen to them, not to others. This of course tells also more about the entity who calls something desinformation than about the receipients of such labels which can be wildly different people and organisations.
mushbino 4y ago
Is it more complex than Prism or whatever project the NSA are on now?

core-utility 4y ago

On the same subject, Darknet Diaries podcast did an episode on PRK and the smuggling of "illegal" media in. It's a good listen. Episode 71: Information Monopoly https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/71/ https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/71/

Kaibeezy 4y ago
USBs are a significant form of sharing information in North Korea. Many citizens have devices with USB ports and SD card slots. So for many years, North Korean defectors have organized efforts to smuggle outside info into North Korea on USB drives to counter Kim Jong-un’s constant propaganda. But these groups were buying memory devices at cost with limited resources. Flash Drives For Freedom is a campaign that travels the world inspiring people to donate their own memory drives. An initiative launched and managed by the Human Rights Foundation, Flash Drives for Freedom is significantly increasing the capacities of these North Korean defector groups. https://flashdrivesforfreedom.org/ https://flashdrivesforfreedom.org/
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- giantrobot 4y ago
  Apparently the use of flash drives is due to the police shutting down power to a neighborhood and then doing raids. With a DVD player a disc would be stuck when the power is cut. So the police roll in and see you've been watching contraband and off to the dirt mines. With a flash drive you can remove it from the port and hide it even with the power out.

hammock 4y ago

Your top comment is about surveillance. However, the article is more geared towards media censorship and control. I’d like to see a conversation comparing censorship and the fight against “disinformation” in NK vs in the USA

mc32 4y ago
I mean, that's a basically a distinction without a difference, depending on who wields the power. Disinformation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea can be anything that goes against any official line. In the US disinformation can also be things (but not all things) that go against the official government line, v.g: Covid, elections, official promulgations, fact checks, etc. It can be difficult to mark a difference, but it's safe to say that at least as of now, fewer things would be marked disinformation in the US despite the new DHS office that would appear to ape how soviet systems (such as DPRK) would deal with what they deem misinformation.
- atoav 4y ago
  For me the border where it starts to flip is whether branding something "disinformation" tells more about the brander or the branded. For example a Russian protester being detained for displaying an empty poster, doesn't tell us a lot about the specific believes of the person with the poster, but a lot about the people who react to such a thing by robbing that persons freedom by claiming it was desinformation (which it wasn't, it was a symbolic act of protest). On the other hand if someone claims vaccines are a evil plot to inject nanobots into our bloodstreams to track everybodies position, this would be desinformation even without any state entity ever reacting to it. It tells a lot about the believe systems and world view of the person claiming such things, but it doesn't necessarily relate a lot to actual policy out there. A third thing would be strategic denounciations like the ones the Nazis used when they coined ther term "Lügenpresse" which translates to "lie-press" or more modern: "fake media". This is used as a form of preventative denounciation. So the act of calling things disinformation before it is even clear what is said in order to weaken it's credibility once it is said and to create an incentive for their followers to only listen to them, not to others. This of course tells also more about the entity who calls something desinformation than about the receipients of such labels which can be wildly different people and organisations.

mushbino 4y ago

Is it more complex than Prism or whatever project the NSA are on now?