Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Defecting from North Korea is now harder

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 201 posts

Re: Defecting from North Korea is now harder

#131

Post by enterprise_cog »

npteljes wrote: post #94
fndex wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article could have come straight from a fiction book. There is no evidence for anything that is being presented. It might be true, it might not be. I'm not arguing they are lying or not, I'm just saying that we shouldn't blindly believe it. But watching this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkUMZS-ZegM made me a little bit skeptical about those defector stories. It's a very good watch, and I guess it doesn'…

I think understand where you're coming from - people can tell whatever they want, and the media definitely loves to run stories like this. These stories are both popular and the diplomatic risk is also low. And we also have the accounts of Yeonmi Park. On the other hand, there's no reason to doubt the story too much. NyT's stories are generally highly factual, even though their primary bias is left-center. And we kno…

The NYT regularly lies for US intelligence agencies. Or just publishes garbage from them as truth without verifying. There is every reason to doubt this story.

Re: Defecting from North Korea is now harder

#132

Post by pantalaimon »

KronisLV wrote: post #127
mardifoufs wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It is evident that having knowledge of individuals' travel destinations would undoubtedly assist in contact tracing efforts. Any evidence for that? Actually, any evidence that contact tracing has actually had any benefits wherever it has been tried? I'm sure it helps at very, very early stages of a pandemic, and even then depending on which virus we are trying to trace... But I'd like to see actual proof that it hel…

> Any evidence for that? Actually, any evidence that contact tracing has actually had any benefits wherever it has been tried? I'm sure it helps at very, very early stages of a pandemic, and even then depending on which virus we are trying to trace... But I'd like to see actual proof that it helps for pandemics like COVID. > Otherwise it is such an easy way to implement mass surveillance, that requiring very very tho…

I think this ended up pretty much useless. If you use the app in public transport, you would get a warning every day.

What were you supposed to do with that information then? Most people just ignored it.

Re: Defecting from North Korea is now harder

#133

Post by inimino »

kelnos wrote: post #129
Arch-TK wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the surveillance system got much more sophisticated but for anyone wondering what china's surveillance system was like before the pandemic, I stayed in China three times for a total of about a month and a half in the 6 months before the pandemic. When you get to the airport, you will likely notice the abundance of cameras, including paths which take you right under overhead cameras. Your photo will be t…

Your bit about taxis seems hard to believe. I haven't been in China in around 15 years, but there are still tons of foreigners visiting China for business reasons, and they need to get around. Requiring them to jump through these sorts of hoops to merely ride in a taxi seems a bit unbelievable. Granted, sometimes the business we were visiting would send a car to our hotel, but not always, and not when we were going o…

The commenter is talking about the local equivalent of Uber, not actual taxis.

Re: Defecting from North Korea is now harder

#134

Post by FormerBandmate »

mardifoufs wrote: post #76
BoxFour wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you asking for evidence that knowing everyone’s locations and travel itineraries would assist in contact tracing? Because I think that one is obvious. Otherwise, I’m not particularly interested in having a COVID conversation.

It's not a conversation about COVID. It's one about contact tracing. And yes I think that evidence should always be required when talking about potential tools for such mass surveillance. "It makes sense" isn't really proof for anything, as the last pandemic has proven times and times again. For example here in Quebec, contact tracing apps and tracking location of everyone with covid has had pretty much no measurable…

The Chinese Communist Party doesn’t give a shit whether it stops Covid or not. The technology isn’t exactly hard and they’re not doing it with US tech companies

Re: Defecting from North Korea is now harder

#135

Post by [deleted] »

arcanemachiner wrote: post #52
mahkoh wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android 13: This site can’t provide a secure connection archive.ph uses an unsupported protocol. ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH

Are you using CloudFlare for your DNS (i.e. 1.1.1.1)? The archive URLs (ph, is, today) used to block requests from them for some reason (and possibly still do). EDIT: Apparently the issue was resolved in 2022 (on mobile and gotta run so can't link wiki page).

[deleted]

Re: Defecting from North Korea is now harder

#136

Post by kelnos »

mahkoh wrote: post #8
mikequinlan wrote: post #2

https://archive.ph/UXyGN

Android 13: This site can’t provide a secure connection archive.ph uses an unsupported protocol. ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH

I see this too. I'm using Firefox, and 1.1.1.1 for my DNS, and get SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP in Firefox, and the same error you do in Chromium. Curl also fails with a similar error.

1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8 (Google's DNS), and 9.9.9.9 (Quad9) all resolve archive.ph to the same IP address for me, 89.253.237.217.

If I get on a VPN (Mullvad, exit in Los Angeles, CA, USA), I get a different address for archive.ph (41.77.143.21), which works fine. If I get off the VPN, but put that address in /etc/hosts, it still works.

Reverse DNS on 89.253.237.217 (no VPN) gives me "example.spb.ru", while for 41.77.143.21 (with VPN) it's "host.41.77.143.21.binaryracks.net".

If I get back on the VPN, and put the Russian IP in /etc/hosts, it works as well. So I wonder if my ISP (Comcast) is interfering with TLS negotiation when attempting to access some hosts, and perhaps this is related to Russian sanctions, or just some other Russia-related blocking?

Anyhow, try putting:

    41.77.143.21 archive.ph
in your /etc/hosts file (not sure if there is an equivalent on Android), and see if that helps.

Re: Defecting from North Korea is now harder

#137

Post by FormerBandmate »

fndex wrote: post #122
mopenstein wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US isn't the only country in the world. Find sources from European or British agencies, unless the U.S. has them under control too?

I'm not the one insinuating that North Koreans are indoctrinated into thinking the great leader has magic powers. You should be the ones to present the sources to such bizarre claims. Jesus, the guy is saying people are indoctrinated into thinking the great leader "didn’t defecate ever". Do you really think North Koreans are that stupid and have zero biology knowledge? Or maybe, uh, this is just fake? Pure propaganda…

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/story-of-a-former...

Yoyre like someone who thinks gravity doesn’t exist. Literally everyone knows this, they’re not stupid, they’re lied to their entire lives. There are tons of defectors who will back this up and you can’t talk to anyone in North Korea outside of carefully guided tours set up by the state

Re: Defecting from North Korea is now harder

#138

Post by KronisLV »

pantalaimon wrote: post #132
KronisLV wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any evidence for that? Actually, any evidence that contact tracing has actually had any benefits wherever it has been tried? I'm sure it helps at very, very early stages of a pandemic, and even then depending on which virus we are trying to trace... But I'd like to see actual proof that it helps for pandemics like COVID. > Otherwise it is such an easy way to implement mass surveillance, that requiring very very tho…

I think this ended up pretty much useless. If you use the app in public transport, you would get a warning every day. What were you supposed to do with that information then? Most people just ignored it.

> If you use the app in public transport, you would get a warning every day.

Wasn't really the case for me going to work, but maybe that's because of keeping a bit of distance, which might just be possible due to the lower population density over and eventually a gradual shift to remote work.

> What were you supposed to do with that information then? Most people just ignored it.

There definitely were people who got the notifications and self-isolated for a while, to not end up spreading the virus and probably take a test ASAP.

If enough people used it, it could help quite a bit with limiting the spread. It did have some effect from what I've heard, which is still good, when doing nothing would result in more deaths. Thankfully eventually the virus variants got less dangerous, but it's sad when a good initiative ends up being less useful due to people just not caring.

Re: Defecting from North Korea is now harder

#139

Post by kelnos »

More-nitors wrote: post #124
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #102

North Korea exists because 5 years after the US liberated China from Japanese oppression, the communist Chinese declared war against the US lead UN forces in South Korea. Fairly wild, in retrospect.

+ PRC sending back escapees back to NK PRC should give the escapees the right to travel, instead of deporting. I expect a lot of wumaos to resort to whataboutisms completely unrelated to the right-to-travel / right-to-asylum / right-to-immigration / etc

PRC restricts the right to travel of its own citizens; seems utterly unsurprising they'd give North Koreans even less.

China has a vested interest in NK remaining a viable country; again, seems unsurprising that they'd do this.

"Should" is aspirational. I agree with you in what China should be doing, but of course they won't.

Re: Defecting from North Korea is now harder

#140

Post by FormerBandmate »

BoxFour wrote: post #73
mardifoufs wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It is evident that having knowledge of individuals' travel destinations would undoubtedly assist in contact tracing efforts. Any evidence for that? Actually, any evidence that contact tracing has actually had any benefits wherever it has been tried? I'm sure it helps at very, very early stages of a pandemic, and even then depending on which virus we are trying to trace... But I'd like to see actual proof that it hel…

Are you asking for evidence that knowing everyone’s locations and travel itineraries would assist in contact tracing? Because I think that one is obvious. Otherwise, I’m not particularly interested in having a COVID conversation.

Contact tracing is also phenomenal cover for increasing surveillance on people, and China’s a dictatorship so no one can really complain that much. You can do things like spend more on cameras, use Bluetooth beacons to determine people’s locations even when they’re not sharing them, monitor highway traffic more, crack down on people traveling with strangers, so much surveillance tech has contact tracing related uses and unlike America, the loss of privacy is a positive for the government
Post reply on HN