Isolated North Korea is developing sophisticated tools to digitally spy on its citizens, who are increasingly using mobile devices to connect to each other, a U. S. government-funded report released on Wednesday says.
SEOUL: Isolated North Korea is developing sophisticated tools to digitally spy on its citizens, who are increasingly using mobile devices to connect to each other, a U. S. government-funded report released on Wednesday says.
The report, “Compromising Connectivity”, says North Korea has allowed the growing use of mobile phones and domestic internet access in return for the detailed information the network feeds Pyongyang’s surveillance state.
“By giving citizens new networked technologies like mobile phones and tablets, the government is able to automatically censor unsanctioned content and observe everything citizens are doing on their devices remotely,” Nat Kretchun, the report’s lead author, told Reuters.
“The authorities have found ingenious ways to turn those new technologies against the North Korean people who are adopting them,” said Kretchun, a researcher at InterMedia, the Washington-based organisation that produced the report.
North Korea’s strategies for keeping tabs on its citizens have been in the limelight since last month’s dramatic killing of leader Kim Jong Un’s estranged half-brother at an airport in the Malaysian capital.
