http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/29/world/asia/29news.html?pagewanted=1&sq&st=nyt&scp=1
North Koreans Use Cellphones to Bare Secrets
Published: March 28, 2010
North Korea, a very private and isolated nation, is facing a new threat from inside its borders—a network of North Korean citizens using cellphones on Chinese cell-networks and Web sites to share information about the internal affairs of their state with South Korea and other Western nations. While much of the news is contradictory and does not reveal much information about the military or any serious state secrets, there have been some relevant information leakages, for example, the severity of the currency crisis last year. However, the informant system has serious flaws, namely that the cellphones and data networks only work along the Chinese border, and is very dangerous for those North Koreans who are recruited into this espionage business as the penalty for participating is death, usually by firing squad. Despite its long list of faults, this system has proven to be the most effective means of information gathering for South Korea as sending spies across the border resulted in only 1 out of 4 men returning home.
While this could be related to Dillon and Wendt’s work about the spread of information and danger, I feel it is more important to consider this story as a part of a trend of methods of espionage becoming more radical and mercenary, as well as more dangerous. North Korean civilians, usually from the poorer walks, are now putting their lives on the line to relay information to the outside world in order to supplement their meager incomes. This follows the several incidents within our own borders of informants sharing secrets of American technology with the Chinese. However, the penalty for these Chinese informants under U.S. law according to the Economic Espionage Act of 1996 is only a 15 to 20 year prison sentence for a serious offense, while the penalty for these North Korean informants for simply sharing opinions on the price of rice is death.
I personally feel that the most important element of this article is the openess of the world today. Totalitarianism is effectively authoritarianism plus technology and an actual desire for absolute control (it is generally agreed upon that most authoritarian dictators had no real interest in controlling every single thing that you did). However, technology also creates greater potential for communication and exchange. So, the greater potential for totalitarianism that there is, the greater potential for open and free societies that there is. It would seem that this is proof that that potential outstrips the potential for control, as even North Korea can not control everything you do. Only through a futuristic, 1984-esque dystopia could you truly control everyone while still having a technologically advanced society.
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