Inside a phone smuggled out of North Korea [video]

7 thunderbong 1 5/31/2025, 5:01:27 PM bbc.com ↗

Comments (1)

perihelions · 17h ago
What's the latency between being outraged at things being digital authoritarianism in North Korea, and, cheerleading the very same things as democratic policies here in the West? Surveillance policies that talkingheads will say are important to support, for reasons you're a major wrongthinker if you dissent from.

Like: that BBC presenter shocked-pikachus at the gadget periodically taking nonconsensual screenshots of the user's device ("...so, they can see when people are looking at or sharing things they're not supposed to...")—but, functionally and practically, that's the same thing as the EU's mandatory data-retention plan already being debated[0], the public comment period closing next month. Public comments which will certainly affect the totally-not-predetermined outcome—if you buy into the pretense that EU parliamentary process on security and mass surveillance is meaningfully different from its counterparts in the Supreme People's Assembly.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1kvmguc/eu_is_plann... ("EU is planning a new mass surveillance law that includes mandating data retention, built-in backdoors, sanctioning non-compliant services and is asking you for feedback (ec.europa.eu)" (1233 comments))