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A Closer Look at North Korea’s Ullim Tablet

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Re: A Closer Look at North Korea’s Ullim Tablet

#91

Post by quirkafleeg »

tokenizerrr wrote: post #87
quirkafleeg wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's comparing this device's tracking with Google's tracking. Why are you pretending you don't realise that?

There is a difference between opt in and getting yourself and your immediate family killed in the process of opting out. You can also install custom ROMs, or just use android without the google apps and not worry about any of this. You can do this in like an hour. If you're stuck in North Korea, there is damned little you can do other than get shot for sending a text message about it (if that is even possible). Which…

So instead of a potentially interesting thread about this device, what it (supposedly) does, how it compares to tech or practices here, we should have another all-been-said-before-1000-times discussion re-stating the boringly obvious about how grim life is in NK?

Re: A Closer Look at North Korea’s Ullim Tablet

#92

Post by fit2rule »

megapatch wrote: post #82
djloche wrote: post #39

Total war against the whole Japanese Empire was completely morally justified in the same way that total war against Nazi Germany was.

You can never morally justify war against civilians, sorry.

Civilians are responsible for their governments. Alas, this is a hard truth that many civilians do not wish to be reminded about.

Re: A Closer Look at North Korea’s Ullim Tablet

#93

Post by fit2rule »

AriaMinaei wrote: post #62
averagewall wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what if they hadn't? Japan was invading most of Asia with mass killings along the lines of ISIS and the Nazis. Are you saying ISIS should also be left alone and America not try to stop them? Japanese civilians at the time weren't really innocent. The whole country was working for the war effort, mainly to kill other Asian people.

> Japanese civilians at the time weren't really innocent. The whole country was working for the war effort, mainly to kill other Asian people. Wow, this is sounding terrifyingly similar to how suicide bombers justify their targeting of civilians. It's sad to see how easy it is for people who didn't grow up under the dogma of fundamentalist religion can still come to this way of thinking. My friend, I implore you to t…

From whom do governments gain power?

(Hint: its not banks..)

Re: A Closer Look at North Korea’s Ullim Tablet

#95

Post by fit2rule »

icelancer wrote: post #81
SXX wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is good chance it's actually developed by developers seating somewhere in Bay Area working for some VC-funded company with inconspicuous name. After all there is a lot of commercial surveillance software that sold to authoritarian regimes. Of course that doesn't mean someone work directly with NK.

Exactly. This was almost certainly made by a Western country under NDA.

Could just as easily be a Chinese company under contract.

Re: A Closer Look at North Korea’s Ullim Tablet

#96

Post by tokenizerrr »

quirkafleeg wrote: post #91
tokenizerrr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between opt in and getting yourself and your immediate family killed in the process of opting out. You can also install custom ROMs, or just use android without the google apps and not worry about any of this. You can do this in like an hour. If you're stuck in North Korea, there is damned little you can do other than get shot for sending a text message about it (if that is even possible). Which…

So instead of a potentially interesting thread about this device, what it (supposedly) does, how it compares to tech or practices here, we should have another all-been-said-before-1000-times discussion re-stating the boringly obvious about how grim life is in NK?

This comment thread isn't about any kind of NK tech. It's another all-been-said-before-1000-times discussion re-stating the boringly obvious about how Google is evil.

Re: A Closer Look at North Korea’s Ullim Tablet

#97

Post by fit2rule »

bschwindHN wrote: post #11
Graphon1 wrote: post #3

ok , so DPRK is installing spyware on tablets that are sold in DPRK. Reading this article, it occurs to me that it's not very different than the surveillance that the NSA is performing on US Citizens, except the NSA is smarter about it and taps the network access, at the network provider.

Are you joking? We couldn't even have this conversation on North Korean devices. As bad as the NSA might be, this is on a completely different level.

Its only a different level because of the amount of control the NSA has over the technological infrastructure, and the degree of force that can be brought to bear - through multiple independent factions of the US military-industrial infrastructure - upon those whom the establishment deem, through surveillance, to be un-savoury.

You probably haven't been paying attention, but the US Gov't make dissidents disappear all the time. They just do it with a velvet glove on, whereas we're more accustomed to complaining about/being distracted by the heavier hand represented by the propaganda against North Korea.

The US gov't is not as innocent as you might think when it comes to handling dissidents. Its just very, very good at maintaining the facade that its all done 'for the greater good of the people of the United States and its possessors'. The USA is, after all, a PR-first nation.

Re: A Closer Look at North Korea’s Ullim Tablet

#98

Post by sleepingeights »

SXX wrote: post #76
raulk wrote: post #68

The North Korean developers who worked on this must be privileged beings with access to the open Internet. I can't imagine developing such a complex system without documentation and references. Maybe they even hang out in Stack Overflow...

There is good chance it's actually developed by developers seating somewhere in Bay Area working for some VC-funded company with inconspicuous name. After all there is a lot of commercial surveillance software that sold to authoritarian regimes. Of course that doesn't mean someone work directly with NK.

The company called Facebook has already implemented features within their services to allow censorship, control, targeted* and mass propaganda efforts, monitoring and surveillance, etc... on targeted* and mass user bases, and is already selling these features to regimes for access to their citizens, and to provide regimes in-depth surveillance access to the social networks. Including, the regime apparatus within the US such as FBI, CIA, etc... Facebook is an "intelligence" product sold both to the US and to other nations. Their company has people who were high executive officers in the "intelligence" and surveillance apparatus in the US (CIA, etc...).

It's not the problem of whether North Korea is implementing these features, as North Korea did not create anything original but rather see's these features already being provided. The problem that Silicon Valley and the US has is that companies (err... countries) like North Korea are implementing (or have implemented) it before their own companies have and that diminishes their capacity to claim IP to related implementations.

* targeted: meaning they can target individuals, and various sizes of groups based on sophisticated and targeted profiling. Trump's campaign used this to divide and conquer the 2016 election.

Re: A Closer Look at North Korea’s Ullim Tablet

#99

Post by thriftwy »

sametmax wrote: post #83
thriftwy wrote: post #80

The business would love to lock down their employees' devices (especially handheld and embedded) like this. They should just come with this system to open market, make a company that is worth billions from the start, because every BigCo would love to buy.

It would be illegal in many countries. E.G: france law consider that an employer can't watch private documents even when opened by an employee, during working hours, using the company equipment.

But this way, employee can't even open private documents! Which makes transgression impossible. Any document that can be opened is a company document, which can be watched.

Re: A Closer Look at North Korea’s Ullim Tablet

#100

Post by sleepingeights »

hutzlibu wrote: post #89
icelancer wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. This was almost certainly made by a Western country under NDA.

I doubt it. They would be too scared of implemented backdoors. They might outsource some parts, maybe to china or india, but they will likely assembly it in NK - to have full control over it.

They're likely a test-bed for a prototype surveillance system already being developed and/or deployed by the Silicon Valley of the West for Western regimes and dictatorships.

edit: Even simple surveillance features like file tagging are already deployed within the US, and is how the FBI claims to track stolen documents to Chinese hackers. Although, the system the FBI uses to track document content traversing the internet is likely quite a bit more sophisticated. The prototype system can even be a rootkit spying system used by corporations to spy on their employees and/or their consumers and customers.

The chain of sales is almost certainly from Silicon Valley, to a Chinese front, to North Korea or [ SV and China ] to North Korea. SV, US, and China work closely together in regards to surveillance, the only real difference is their rhetoric and how they sell it to their citizens.

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