Slashdot Mirror
Internet Giving Rise To "Citizen Spies"
reporter writes "According to a startling report by the Wall Street Journal, the Internet has empowered ordinary people to be part-time intelligence officers, uncovering secrets like military facilities and prison camps across the landscape of North Korea. The report states, '[Curtis] Melvin is at the center of a dozen or so citizen snoops who have spent the past two years filling in the blanks on the map of one of the world's most secretive countries. Seeking clues in photos, news reports and eyewitness accounts, they affix labels to North Korean structures and landscapes captured by Google Earth, an online service that stitches satellite pictures into a virtual globe. The result is an annotated North Korea of rocket-launch sites, prison camps and elite palaces on white-sand beaches. "It's democratized intelligence," says Mr. Melvin. More than 35,000 people have downloaded Mr. Melvin's file, North Korea Uncovered. It has grown to include thousands of tags in categories such as "nuclear issues" (alleged reactors, missile storage), dams (more than 1,200 countrywide) and restaurants (47). Its Wikipedia approach to spying shows how Soviet-style secrecy is facing a new challenge from the Internet's power to unite a disparate community of busybodies.'"
Citizens spy on you?
*ducks*
Does this mean I get to act out my favorite moments from 24 on that creepily suspicious neighbor of mine, the one who speaks that foreigner lingo in with his so call family? I can't wait. Now where'd I put my home waterboarding kit...
For one thing, analysts aren't in hostile territory and subject to arrest.
The miniturization and degree of complexity in today's modern electronics, combined with price drops from affordable generic knock-offs of premium items makes it now possible to equip yourself like James Bond after a Q-Branch sequence with little more than a shoestring budget and a Best Buy online account.
Wikipedia: a disparate community of busybodies. Yep, pretty much the best definition I've heard.
But lets hope the quality of these citizen intelligence officers is vastly superior to the average wikipedian. Using wikipedia-based information might get you a fail mark, a libel suit, minor injuries, or a variety of other personal problems. However, using poor intelligence information might get us all nuked, or start a major war. (citation: see Iran, Weapons of Mass destruction, intelligence failure thereof)
With a million eyeballs, no restaurant can remain hidden
Some books on the subject:
Slashdot spreading fear mongering.
I wonder what kind of trouble you'd get in if you made a similarly detailed map of all military installations (secret or otherwise) in the US or the UK.
Considering the oproar over showing where schools, churches and Cheney's residence are, I wouldn't be surprised if it was more difficult to get it done for the US than for North Korea ...
On one side it is cool how proliferation of information is creating transparency in areas previously shrouded with secrecy, on the other side it is somewhat creepy to see how it is becoming increasingly more acceptable to out things without the involved party's consent. Are we evolving into info junkies, who under the guise of "The Public Has The Right To Know" are simply feeding our addiction to sticking our noses into everyone's business? I admit that I am addicted to information (duh I am on /.), but I do not like to think of myself as a Peeping Tom. Sorry, its early in the morning and the caffeine is slowly working through my system, I must ponder this some more....
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
Or you could make a glider with AI or remote control. Perhaps an infrared camera on a glider would help it find thermal columns? Gliders piloted by humans have flown over 3000 km, I wonder how much a remote control glider could do.
And keep this story in mind the next time an "American" (they always turn out to be dual citizens) is arrested for spying in Iran or China - we don't know whether a US citizen has been doing some un-sanctioned spying on another country. Even if they're not on the CIA payroll, it could be business interests, it could be family ties, it could be a grudge, and after reading this story I realize it could just be flat out idle curiosity?
Steve Urkel
Every time I hear about the death of newspapers, I wonder how the efforts of a small number of full time reporters would match up to the lackadaisical efforts of a million maternal basement dwellers with Internet connections.
was probably operation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System), which would have given each and every US-citizen the chance to effectively spy on his neighbours. But sadly, only a few are lucky now, quote (loc. cit.): "On June 30, 2008, the Denver Post reported that 181 individuals, including police officers, paramedics, firefighters, utility workers, and railroad employees had been trained as Terrorism Liaison Officers to report suspicious information which could be signs of terrorist activity. The article also stated that TLOs were already active in six other states and the District of Columbia". </sarcasm>
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
I'm not sure that I want the same pool of people that believe in faces on Mars, and other hoaxes, interpreting photos of North Korea.
I agree, how do we know pictures of "concentration camps" weren't planted there by the CIA? And I trust NK "defectors" as much as I trusted Iraqi defectors and their tales of Saddam's advanced WMD programs back in 2003.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
Wikileaks has also played an important role in revealing secrets. In addition, Wikipedia also helps people disseminate information that is direct and to the point, in plain language, with references and with links to articles containing more specific information. It's an invaluable tool for knowledge. I hope it never disappears, and I am glad that they offer burnt-to-DVD versions of articles.
Plus, every time I visit a web site for information, I save it, because I never know if that information will disappear or change. When I go back, I save another copy so I can compare, and also so I can retain information in previous copies should I need to reference it.
Twinstiq, game news
I get the point you're trying to make here and more or less agree with it. But I think the fact that news outlets in the west always show footage of military parades when discussing North Korea has less to do with conspiracy than it does with that country being so tightly controlled that there really isn't anything else for them to show.
It's case of not attributing to malice that with can adequately explained by laziness (on the part of western TV networks).
This ain't rocket surgery.
I suggest asking someone from the north of China (which is where the North Korean refugees run to) about this and you'll get a bit more understanding of the situation. North Korea is an incredibly nasty place to live unless you are one of the elite. While things in the south have not been ideal the north is an entirely different world of horror.
Let me tell you, totalitarian Soviet-like propaganda that North Koreans (and, formerly, Soviets) were experiencing has nothing to do with "reasons" or "reasoning".
This is how it works: in school or at work, day after day, they make you repeat what the newspapers say. Originality is bad for you, thinking is bad for you, reasoning is bad for you. Parroting it back with every show of enthusiasm is good for you.
Life in Korea and (in the Soviet Union) is very militarized, and the rolling tanks are a big deal. Parades are sacred (and you are made to show up to watch and cheer whether you want it or not).
Life of an ordinary person in North Korea (and in USSR) is somewhere between slavery and serfdom, and is permeated with fear. Let me tell you, this kind of life sucks.
The US troops in South Korea was the only thing that prevented the same regime from being established all over Korea. Now South Koreans can work on their computers, cars, etc., rather than dying of hunger by the millions (look up the recent hunger in NK). Alas, not every nation taken over by Communists was so lucky. Recall that in Cuba they only just allowed people to own computers and cell phones (if they can afford them). But try finding some Cubans online.
That said, Western media is indeed quite stupid. It drools over tyrants and is easily impressed by staged performances, including parades. What they should have been showing is the abject poverty and fear in which ordinary people live. But you can't show that in 2 seconds, you have to live there to see it.
The worst case I saw of this was on 9/11 when a leading US News network (not sure which) showed file footage of celebrating Palestinian soccer fans and said they were celebrating the attack. There is often malice or an agenda in the choice of footage to show with an emotive story.
However - it's true as said above there's not really much film of things happening in North Korea anyway. Not even the Chinese just over the border know much about what is going on apart from what they hear from refugees - and that even includes the Chinese with relatives in North Korea which they may not hear from in decades.
Uh, ever tried searching google earth for FEMA Camps in the USA?
I agree, that was a pretty egregious case of manipulation on the part of the network involved (Fox, probably, but I could be wrong). But I don't think the same situation exists with television news organizations re: the PRK. That's due more to a lack of creativity than bias.
This ain't rocket surgery.
timeOday is referring to Roxana Saberi. The Iranian government rarely acts appropriately, but in her case, it was 100% in the right in sentencing her to imprisonment.
The American media understandably presented her as an innocent victim. American journalists simply did not know that Roxana Saberi had taken -- without authorization -- top-secret military documents authored and owned by the Iranian government. Those documents assessed the Iraq War.
If a dual national had done the same thing in the USA, then Washington would have sent her to prison.
In the case of Roxana Saberi, Tehran was right to act. Washington was wrong to complain.
The American people were wrong to support Saberi. She made no attempt to rescind her Iranian citizenship while simultaneously holding American citizenship. Indeed, she used her Iranian citizenship to her advantage to get a job with the Iranian government.
Americans should not waste resources -- time, money, or lives -- in supporting a person who willfully exhibits divided loyalties.
"That, and a series of other misfortunes for North Korea led things to what is admittedly a sad state."
What in the !?$!$# are you talking about? North Korea is largely responsible for its own sad state. A large number of its citizens starving every few years is not because of outside influence, but largely because of many years of internal mismanagement. The mismanagement includes building lavish palace complexes like this, complete with an entire valley fenced off and a private railway station. Long and expensive railway lines have been built through the mountains not to deliver produce, but to get the elite to their mountain palaces. There are dozens of these things. It's pathetic.
The simple reality is, the elite of North Korea live in splendor while the average person is little better than a serf, and the only reason is because the leaders there *like* it that way. That problem has nothing to do with foreigners.
And that's what's really obvious if you pour over the Google Earth imagery. It's remote sensing, but you can see right away that the country has been built to screw over the common people while keeping the elite in luxury. It's not socialism. It's not communism. It's like some 20th or 21st-century version of Feudalism.
You might as well be in Nazi Germany, or old school Russia.
Time to put that tinfoil on the windows too.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
We had this before the Internet: it's called Neighborhood Watch programs. My extension of it, and a solution to the fears of emergence of Big Brother with the advent of cameras on every street corner, is to wire those cameras up to either the global 'Net or a local WAN and let anyone monitor those cameras and report suspicious activity. The police would merely act on reports from citizens; police would not monitor the cameras directly except perhaps with the express request and consent of a citizen. If the camera system is "open sourced" and available to anyone, then it's not Big Brother, it's democracy in action.
Setting: front lawn. Neighbor is watering his lawn and CBS is coming home from work.
Neighbor: Hello CBS, good evening!
*cbs jumps over fence and grabs Neighbor, dragging him to the closed garage door, and and slams him against it
cbs: Where are the weapons?! WHERE ARE THE WEAPONS?!
Neighbor (flabbergasted): weapons? What are you talking about?
*neighbor starts to fall down the garage door as Bauer^Wcbs pulls him back up and slams him against it, pulling a USP and pressing it into Neighbor's nose
CBS: The weapons, god damn it, the WEAPONS! It's over, my partner found your collaborators. They were here twenty minutes ago!
Neighbor: Twenty minutes? There were girl scouts here selling us some Ginger Snaps about 20 minutes ago.
CBS: Yes, the cookies! Terrorists are using them to disperse dangerous nerve
Neighbor: They're just cookies, you crazy fuck!
* Neighbor kicks cbs in the nuts takes the gun off the ground, and uses his cell phone to call 911
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Got nothing better to do? Of all the threats to the world order, I think North Korea sits pretty close to the bottom. How about we uncover some of the hundreds of secret & illegal US & Israeli prisons, nuclear sites, etc? Sure, I know the answer already ... because these are 35,000 idiots we're talking about, and they all believe that North Korea is out to get them, and that the US and Israel are bastions of peace and democracy. Of course, in our secret prisons, no-one is tortured to death. And our secret nuclear bases would never actually launch an attack on another country ... in fact these are better thought of as peace bases, and are only secret because our enemies want to attack our peace!
This has been already happening and apparently our government has turn it to their flavour. We have a website STOMP which is setup by our only local newspapers publishing outlet, SPH (Singapore Press Holdings aka. Singapore Propaganda Holdings) which is directly in control by the PAP (People Action Party) government. The website encourages anybody to take pictures of anything from 'ungracious' behaviour to some Youtube-wanna stuff and post as articles to discriminate people. Some of them actually become our daily headline news (our daily news is filled with gossip and rubbish). A truly sad police/nanny state...
Obama's recent tussell with "Dick" Chaney give sivers up the spine.
"Indefinite Detention" has not been defined by Pres. Barak Obama -- yet lends to many actions by the State, to render Citizens as Slaves of the State.
Is "Indefinite Detention" imposed for:
1. Thought Crimes
2. Crimes of Conscientiousness
3. Crimes of "Original Sin".
Much is yet to be said from Barak Obama.
In his defense, Prudence would argue to incarcirate all citizens of the United States of America, into a new Federal Prision System, one that begins and ends at the physical boarders -- a truly wounderfull Gulag, given by his presumptions that -- all are guilty -- and must a all costs be stopped, otherwise killed and renderd useless to the aims of the Holy Executive and Chief. A new Religion thus born, a Religion of Hate, upon the peoples of the United States of America, from their own President.
If it is the wanting of this President to make all peoples of the United States of America, the Enemies of the State, then the President Barak Obama has made himself the Enemy of the World.
So unfortunate.
Sleep well Barak.
Several thousand people a year have visited North Korea. It really is a terrible place, don't delusion yourself.
I never thought a story like this would uncover so many N. Korea apologists. I love the busybody remark -- no bias there. "Nothing to see, move along."