Google Looks to Ballooned Future for Internet (for north Korea)

Good for Eric Schmidt.  Have to like the name of the project.  Perhaps a well chosen one with a double meaning.

But on a serious note this is the kind of creative thinking for influence operations we need.  I wonder if the north will use its SA-2s to try to shoot down these balloons?

V/R

Dave

Google Looks to Ballooned Future for Internet

http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?num=11415&cataId=nk03600

Kim Bang Hyun, Editor, Bait [student magazine]  |  2014-01-23 19:11

Google recently revealed a new project that could pose a threat to the regime of Kim Jong Eun. “Project Loon” [http://www.google.com/loon/] uses superpressured helium balloons to provide networked wireless Internet services to inaccessible areas. Last summer Google tested the project in New Zealand, but says that some of the primary beneficiaries could be citizens of closed countries, a category that includes North Korea.

The balloons float 20km up in the stratosphere, where they move with the wind to form a network transmitting a signal that people on the surface can pick up via a special antenna. The balloons are self-contained: high enough not to be damaged by daily weather phenomena or aviation, they run on solar power, and each can survive for 100+ days due to their rugged construction.

If the project were to have a decisive effect on the people of North Korea, Google would thus be remembered as one of the leading protagonists in bringing and end to the Kim dynasty. Of course, there is no evidence whatsoever that this is their intention. Rather, Google pursues radical innovations for their own sake, and takes large, future-orientated gambles; changing the world is a byproduct.

Ironically, one of many things that already make Kim Jong Eun rather uncomfortable is the flying of leaflets into the North suspended beneath far more primitive balloons. The far-reaching power of these anti-regime leaflets should not be underplayed, and nor should their cost:effect ratio. As such, the North Korean regime reacts sensitively to the launching of such leaflets, and cites them as one cause of worsening North-South relations.

However, they are limited in the sense that is hard for them to physically reach people in interior regions of the country, including Pyongyang.

What if Project Loon were to transmit similar content? This would resolve the distance issue at a stroke. The people of North Korea could be receiving many, many leaflets, always unseen. And if the North were to shoot down the balloons, would the problem disappear? The internet-beaming solar-powered balloons are cheap to produce, whereas the cost of shooting them down one by one would be huge. As a result, the regime would be rendered helpless in the face of web-based leaflets raining down upon its head.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt visited North Korea in January 2013, whereupon he criticized the restrictions placed on the Internet in the country. The North Korean side appeared to ignore him. We know not whether Google had North Korea in mind as it pushed forward with its balloon project thereafter. Either way, the power elite in Pyongyang is evidently at pains to disaffirm the value of innovation, and does not recognize the signs of change coming right under their own noses.

* This Guest Column is an abridged version of one that appeared in Korean on January 23rd. Opinions expressed in Guest Columns are not necessarily those of Daily NK.

The Dark Side of the Digital Revolution By ERIC SCHMIDT and JARED COHEN (Google and north Korea)

This is something everyone who studies unconventional warfare needs to read: e.g., a way to contribute to being able to coerce, disrupt or overthrow a government or occupying power. I criticized Mr. Schmidt for his visit to north Korea but between this essay and his daughter's excellent essay I am glad they went though I now wish it had been on their own and not with Governor Richardson. (Had they gone on their own they probably would have met Kim Jong-Un before Dennis Rodman.)

V/R

Dave

• THE SATURDAY ESSAY
• Updated April 19, 2013, 2:59 p.m. ET

The Dark Side of the Digital Revolution

Google's Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, fresh from a visit to North Korea in January, on why the Internet is far from an unalloyed good to the citizens of dictatorships around the world.

By ERIC SCHMIDT and JARED COHEN

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324030704578424650479285218.html#printMode

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, director of Google Ideas, talk with WSJ's John Bussey about what they hoped to accomplish from a visit to North Korea, and their observations about the country's technological potential and its likelihood of embracing the Internet. Photo: Getty Images

How do you explain to people that they are a YouTube sensation, when they have never heard of YouTube or the Internet? That's a question we faced during our January visit to North Korea, when we attempted to engage with the Pyongyang traffic police. You may have seen videos on the Web of the capital city's "traffic cops," whose ballerina-like street rituals, featured in government propaganda videos, have made them famous online. The men and women themselves, however—like most North Koreans—have never seen a Web page, used a desktop computer, or held a tablet or smartphone. They have never even heard of Google (or Bing, for that matter).

Even the idea of the Internet has not yet permeated the public's consciousness in North Korea. When foreigners visit, the government stages Internet browsing sessions by having "students" look at pre-downloaded and preapproved content, spending hours (as they did when we were there) scrolling up and down their screens in totalitarian unison. We ended up trying to describe the Internet to North Koreans we met in terms of its values: free expression, freedom of assembly, critical thinking, meritocracy. These are uncomfortable ideas in a society where the "Respected Leader" is supposedly the source of all information and where the penalty for defying him is the persecution of you and your family for three generations.

North Korea is at the beginning of a cat-and-mouse game that's playing out all around the world between repressive regimes and their people. In most of the world, the spread of connectivity has transformed people's expectations of their governments. North Korea is one of the last holdouts. Until only a few years ago, the price for being caught there with an unauthorized cellphone was the death penalty. Cellphones are now more common in North Korea since the government decided to allow one million citizens to have them; and in parts of the country near the border, the Internet is sometimes within reach as citizens can sometimes catch a signal from China. None of this will transform the country overnight, but one thing is certain: Though it is possible to curb and monitor technology, once it is available, even the most repressive regimes are unable to put it back in the box.

Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen preview their essay in Saturday's Wall Street Journal on their observations during a recent trip to North Korea. In this excerpt from an interview with WSJ's John Bussey, they discuss whether the country can allow some access to the Internet.

What does this mean for governments and would-be revolutionaries? While technology has great potential to bring about change, there is a dark side to the digital revolution that is too often ignored. There is a turbulent transition ahead for autocratic regimes as more of their citizens come online, but technology doesn't just help the good guys pushing for democratic reform—it can also provide powerful new tools for dictators to suppress dissent.

Fifty-seven percent of the world's population still lives under some sort of autocratic regime. In the span of a decade, the world's autocracies will go from having a minority of their citizens online to a majority. From Tehran to Beijing, autocrats are building the technology and training the personnel to suppress democratic dissent, often with the help of Western companies.

Of course, this is no easy task—and it isn't cheap. The world's autocrats will have to spend a great deal of money to build systems capable of monitoring and containing dissident energy. They will need cell towers and servers, large data centers, specialized software, legions of trained personnel and reliable supplies of basic resources like electricity and Internet connectivity. Once such an infrastructure is in place, repressive regimes then will need supercomputers to manage the glut of information.

Despite the expense, everything a regime would need to build an incredibly intimidating digital police state—including software that facilitates data mining and real-time monitoring of citizens—is commercially available right now. What's more, once one regime builds its surveillance state, it will share what it has learned with others. We know that autocratic governments share information, governance strategies and military hardware, and it's only logical that the configuration that one state designs (if it works) will proliferate among its allies and assorted others. Companies that sell data-mining software, surveillance cameras and other products will flaunt their work with one government to attract new business. It's the digital analog to arms sales, and like arms sales, it will not be cheap. Autocracies rich in national resources—oil, gas, minerals—will be able to afford it. Poorer dictatorships might be unable to sustain the state of the art and find themselves reliant on ideologically sympathetic patrons.

And don't think that the data being collected by autocracies is limited to Facebook posts or Twitter comments. The most important data they will collect in the future is biometric information, which can be used to identify individuals through their unique physical and biological attributes. Fingerprints, photographs and DNA testing are all familiar biometric data types today. Indeed, future visitors to repressive countries might be surprised to find that airport security requires not just a customs form and passport check, but also a voice scan. In the future, software for voice and facial recognition will surpass all the current biometric tests in terms of accuracy and ease of use.

Today's facial-recognition systems use a camera to zoom in on an individual's eyes, mouth and nose, and extract a "feature vector," a set of numbers that describes key aspects of the image, such as the precise distance between the eyes. (Remember, in the end, digital images are just numbers.) Those numbers can be fed back into a large database of faces in search of a match. The accuracy of this software is limited today (by, among other things, pictures shot in profile), but the progress in this field is remarkable. A team at Carnegie Mellon demonstrated in a 2011 study that the combination of "off-the-shelf" facial recognition software and publicly available online data (such as social-network profiles) can match a large number of faces very quickly. With cloud computing, it takes just seconds to compare millions of faces. The accuracy improves with people who have many pictures of themselves available online—which, in the age of Facebook, is practically everyone.

(Continued at the link below)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324030704578424650479285218.html#printMode

Teenage Daughter of Google Chief Spills The True Story on North Korea Visit: Puts to Shame Free Press, Dad, and U.S. Government

This is definitely worth a read.  Sophie Schmidt made the trip worth it.  Her irreverent, humorous and un-politically correct yet very perceptive observations while accompanying her father and Governor Richardson illustrates some wisdom beyond her years. Her complete article with photos from her web page is entitled “It might not get weirder than this”.  Again definitely worth a read on many different levels but I sure wish more senior people who travel to north Korea could be as good observers as her and not be taken in by the propaganda and attempted manipulation by the north.  However, after publishing this, I am sure the only time she will get to travel to the north again is after Korean Unification is achieved.  But this is the key excerpt that demonstrates her understanding of the north:

Ms Schmidt then offered a health warning on how much credibility her observations should be accorded: “#1 Caveat: It’s impossible to know how much we can extrapolate from what we saw in Pyongyang to what the DPRK is really like.  Our trip was a mixture of highly staged encounters, tightly-orchestrated viewings and what seemed like genuine human moments.  We had zero interactions with non-state-approved North Koreans and were never far from our two minders (2, so one can mind the other).”

V/R

Dave

Teenage Daughter of Google Chief Spills The True Story on North Korea Visit: Puts to Shame Free Press, Dad, and U.S. Government

20 JAN

By Nate Thayer

http://natethayer.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/teenage-daughter-of-google-chief-spills-the-true-story-on-north-korea-visit-puts-to-shame-free-press-dad-and-u-s-government/

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt may now regret inviting his 19 year old teenage daughter, Sophie Schmidt, along on his world headline grabbing, secretive trip to North Korea last week.

Sophie Schmidt was one of the nine members of the high powered delegation which included her dad, representing the world’s most prominent powerhouse, Google corporation, in the new internet age of borderless, free, uncensored flow of  information to the most restricted closed and censored society on earth. Other members included her dad, former U.S. presidential candidate, Ambassador to the United Nations and governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, and other powerful but very tight lipped hi tech and government types.

Together they have revealed virtually nothing of the purpose, encounters, impressions, and success of the trip to North Korea.

Cartoon posted by hid daughter on blog post writing about her trip to North Korea

Until teenager Sophie posted a startling frank, detailed, and revealing blog today, accompanied by typical American teenage bluntness and snarky, that blew away the powerful American mucky mucks scripted silence, revealing all the public interest really needed to know.

Now, really, was that so hard?

North Korean ID card of Sophie Schmidt, teenage daughter of Google chief

The quite entertaining and enticing young Ms Schmidt got right to the point.

Titled “It might not get weirder than this”, Sophie’s blog post began with the caveat “ Pro tip: Max browser window (for width), keep scrolling and blame Google Sites (and this two-column structure idea of mine) for limited functionality.  Proper slideshow at the end with larger-version photos. Apologies to folks with f’d up layouts” which was followed by a highlighted note before her incisive and insightful musing on the Google delegation 4 day visit began: “Disclaimer: I am a North Korea amateur and can only share what it’s like to be part of a NK-bound delegation. Straightforward trip report here: no discussion of meeting details or intentions–just some observations.”

She began with a photo of the North Korean Custom form to be filled out upon arrival in Pyongyang. “Do note #1 and #6: leave your “killing device” and “publishing’s of all kinds” at home.  Got it. We carried a ton of cash (USD) since that was the only way to pay for anything.”

“Do note #1 and #6: leave your “killing device” and “publishing’s of all kinds” at home. Got it.” wrote Ms Schmidt

She then detailed the ambience of their surroundings. “We also met our handlers, two men from the Foreign Ministry, whom we gave code names. Unusually, both men had lived in the US, in addition to other countries, as embassy staffers…. How on earth do they reconcile the differences they see between their experience abroad and what they’d always been told?” adding “It was a nine-person delegation in total. We left our phones and laptops behind in China, since we were warned they’d be confiscated in NK, and probably infected with lord knows what malware.”

(Continued at the link below)

http://natethayer.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/teenage-daughter-of-google-chief-spills-the-true-story-on-north-korea-visit-puts-to-shame-free-press-dad-and-u-s-government/

EXCLUSIVE: FOREIGNERS NOW PERMITTED TO CARRY MOBILE PHONES IN NORTH KOREA

The operative word is "carry".  As in foreigners will be able to carry their cell phones but not be able use them so they will be as effective as a paperweight.

Excerpt:

Despite this new development, tourists are currently neither able to roam on North Korea’s domestic KoryoLink network nor purchase local SIM cards, meaning that despite being allowed to carry their handsets, they are unusable. 

Again, keep in mind image first politics.  But Richardson and Schmidt went to north Korea and did not get to see or help get released Kenneth Bae.  They saw the computer "Potemkin Villages" and I will bet they asked about cell phones. In fact they probably matter-of-factly made a comment along the lines of "you should let foreigners carry their phones."  They were probably responding to a question such as how can we make people like north Korea and they casually responded with a "carry cell phone" comment.  Of course the north Koreans parsed every word exchanged and someone came up with the idea that sure we can let foreigners carry their cell phones but we will not allow them to put sim cards in their phones and we certainly will not allow international access through their phones.  So they were able to literally take the advice of Schmidt and Richardson.  I mention this because Richardson at least should understand how the north will exploit anything and everything they can and of course interpret and spin anything said to their benefit.

V/R

Dave

EXCLUSIVE: FOREIGNERS NOW PERMITTED TO CARRY MOBILE PHONES IN NORTH KOREA

CHANGE IN NATIONAL POLICY COMES JUST DAYS AFTER GOOGLE CHAIRMAN'S VISIT

HTTP://WWW.NKNEWS.ORG/2013/01/EXCLUSIVE-FOREIGNERS-NOW-PERMITTED-TO-CARRY-MOBILE-PHONES-IN-NORTH-KOREA/

 January 19, 2013

NK NEWS can exclusively reveal that only days after Google chairman Eric Schmidt’s visit to North Korea, tourists may now bring cell phones into the country without having them confiscated by immigration officials at the border.

Up until now, bringing mobile phones into North Korea has been strictly forbidden, with all handsets confiscated at customs and only returned on exit. Despite this new development, tourists are currently neither able to roam on North Korea’s domestic KoryoLink network nor purchase local SIM cards, meaning that despite being allowed to carry their handsets, they are unusable. 

The news that cellphones can be legally brought into North Korea comes just days after Google’s Eric Schmidt and former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson’s returned from a high profile trip to North Korea. At that time, there had been no reporting on what had happened to the delegation’s cell phones upon entry to the DPRK. It is possible that they may have been the first group to benefit from the new policy. Either way, coming so soon after the Google trip, it can be read as a signal of North Korea’s possible softening of its stance toward communication technology, and its increased interest in understanding the ways it can engage with advancements in the field.

According to Richie Fenner, a tour manager at China based Young Pioneer Tours who reported the news today, explained that GPS enabled devices are allowed in the country. He told us:

When we were coming in on the train, they asked us to show us our phones. The customs official asked if the first one he looked at had GPS, which it didn’t, so he handed it back. But then with the iPhones and other modern phones when we told them they had GPS, he just handed them back and gestured that we just put them in our bag.

Thinking that the phones might just be sealed upon the group’s arrival to Pyongyang, Fenner explained that to his surprise the local guides explained a new policy meant that foreigners can now keep their cell phones in their possession. But that didn’t mean they could be used. Fenner explained, “Wthout a North Korean sim card, the phones are useless. I asked if we could get North Korean SIM cards and our guide said that it might be possible in the future”.

(Continued at the link below)

HTTP://WWW.NKNEWS.ORG/2013/01/EXCLUSIVE-FOREIGNERS-NOW-PERMITTED-TO-CARRY-MOBILE-PHONES-IN-NORTH-KOREA/

'Google Delegation' Becomes Propaganda Tool

No kidding.  Our theme song for dealing with north Korea should be the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again."  Every time we deal with north Korea we should be playing that song.  Richardson and his expert advisers should have known better.  This is classic north Korean propaganda and a blind man should have seen this coming:

“There’ve been these lectures about how, with the world enthused at how we managed to conquer space under the sage leadership of the Marshal (Kim Jong Eun), even a delegation led by the head of a famous American Internet company came to pay a congratulatory visit to our country.”
 “The whole world, including America, was astonished by the success of the launch of our artificial earth satellite,” the lecturer reportedly continued, going on, “The enemy, cowed by the power of our strong country, even sent a congratulatory delegation.”

V/R
Dave

'Google Delegation' Becomes Propaganda Tool

By Choi Song Min [2013-01-15 21:22 ] http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk01500&num=10235

The North Korean authorities are now using the recent visit of Internet search engine Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, in post-“Gwangmyungsung-3” launch public propaganda lectures. A source from the northerly city of Hyesan told Daily NK today, “There’ve been these lectures about how, with the world enthused at how we managed to conquer space under the sage leadership of the Marshal (Kim Jong Eun), even a delegation led by the head of a famous American Internet company came to pay a congratulatory visit to our country.” “The whole world, including America, was astonished by the success of the launch of our artificial earth satellite,” the lecturer reportedly continued, going on, “The enemy, cowed by the power of our strong country, even sent a congratulatory delegation.” That’s not all: according to the source, the visit of Schmidt, who was in North Korea as part of a delegation led by former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, his advisor Tony Namkung, the head of Google Ideas Jared Cohen and Professor John Delury of Yonsei University, has featured in not only newspaper and television broadcasts but also on the so-called "3rd Broadcast," the fixed line radio system wired into the fabric of homes and public buildings across North Korea. (Continued at the link below) http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk01500&num=10235

Eric Schmidt’s North Korea Trip May Not Be as Ridiculous as It Sounds

Sure I would hope that Kim Jong-un would accept Google in north Korea and allow his people access to outside information because as I have said he would be singularly responsible for the collapse of the Kim Family Regime and would become a hero to Korea making the largest contribution to unification that any foreigner could possibly make.  Professor Cha (though his earlier statements show perhaps a little too much optimism because I do not think this event is anything more than another gimmick to support "Image First Politics")  is exactly right with his concluding statement and very much the reason why nothing (beyond perhaps the release of Kenneth Bae) is likely to come of this and also why I believe that Richardson and Schmidt are going to get played.

It’s also hard to imagine that 29-year-old Kim Jong-un, who was educated in the West, can resist the same tech that defines the lives of twentysomethings around the world. “He’s got to be interested in this stuff,” Cha says. But the risks are great: “As soon as he allows open access to it, he can kiss his leadership goodbye.”

But I just heard Richardson say on CNN that he is in good hands because he is taking his expert advisor Tony Namkung (Chinese born and raised in Tokyo) who is an Asian expert.  You can read his bio below and note what he wrote in 2000 about the north opening up and of course blaming the US for being involved in dividing the peninsula – thus overlooking the fact had two US Army officers, Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel not come up with the plan for the Soviets to take the Japanese surrender north of the 38th parallel and the US to the South the peninsula would today be unified under the Stalinist dictatorship that was established in the north in 1945.

But I think perhaps Tony Namkung's north Korean expertise is equivalent to my current football skills.  I can watch a football game on TV and explain it so I must be able to play in the Super Bowl.

K.A. "Tony" Namkung, Ph.D. - Partner
http://www.zoominfo.com/#!search/profile/person?personId=49022005&targetid=profile
Tony is an internationally known expert on U.S. - Asia relations and is well known and highly respected by business and government leaders throughout Asia and the U.S. He is Owner of Murray Hill Consultants, LLC, an advisory services firm assisting corporations on both sides of the Pacific in the areas of corporate strategy, market access, and governmental relations. Tony's knowledge, experience and extensive professional network makes him uniquely suited to lead Sandia Capital Partners strategic advisory and investment activities for Asian businesses seeking to expand activities in the Southwestern United States and for US businesses seeking investment and strategic alliances with leading Asian corporations. 

Tony has over three decades' experience in fostering U.S.-Asia relations, including at U.C., Berkeley where he taught and served as Deputy Director of its Institute of East Asian Studies, as Executive Director of the Asia Society in New York, and in the think tank community as Guest Scholar at theBrookings Institution and Director of the Atlantic Council of the United States. He has also served as Senior Adviser to Shearman & Sterling and as President of the Shearman & Sterling Institute. He has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 1991 and sits on the boards and committees of a number of national organizations dealing with U.S.-Asia relations.
Tony holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and is the recipient of numerous national fellowships, grants from private foundations, and honors and prizes in the Asian field. He was born in Shanghai and raised in Tokyo while attending American schools. 

NAPSNet Daily Report, Tuesday, October 10, 2000ftp.nautilus.org, 14 Mar 2001 [cached]The Los Angeles Times published an opinion article by K.A. Namkung, chairman of Murray Hill Company in New Jersey, specializing in doing business with North Korea, ("U.S.-N. KOREA NORMALIZATION IS NOW IN SIGHT," 10/6/00) which said this week's visit by Jo Myong- rok, DPRK's first vice chairman of the National Defense Commission to the US could reshape the security landscape of Northeast Asia.
...
This visit, Namkung wrote, " could lead to a meeting of leaders of the two nations."He continued, "With the dramatic improvement in its relations with South Korea, the restoration of its ties underway with its former allies, China and Russia, and its normalization efforts with the European Union, Japan and other countries, now was the time for North Korea to realize its decade- old strategy of bringing its most formidable adversary, the United States, to the peace table.But the United States must be more involved in easing the military standoff.It can serve as an honest broker between the two Koreas, not on the model of Camp David but as a stabilizer and harmonizer.The U.S. was involved in dividing the Korean peninsula.It must now help bring peace to this troubled land and thereby secure its long-term presence in the region."

V/R

Dave

Eric Schmidt’s North Korea Trip May Not Be as Ridiculous as It Sounds

• BY MARCUS WOHLSEN01.04.137:55 PM

• HTTP://WWW.WIRED.COM/BUSINESS/2013/01/ERIC-SCHMIDT-NORTH-KOREA/

Google chairman Eric Schmidt’s planned trip to North Korea promises few returns for the company’s shareholders. But for the world’s most locked-down country, where only a few thousand citizens have internet access at all, his visit could offer the strongest hint yet of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s tortured longing for openness.

To be sure, the gulf between Google and North Korea couldn’t seem wider.

“The face of probably the most important facilitator of borderless information in the world is going into the hyperstate for the control of information,” says Victor Cha, a director of Asian affairs for the National Security Council during the second Bush administration and now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The past quarter-century has seen ex-presidents, diplomats, and the world’s most powerful nations try and fail to crack open North Korea’s totalitarian regime. During the visit reportedly planned for later this month, Schmidt will join former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson for what Richardson described as a “private humanitarian visit” to free a detained U.S. citizen over the State Department’s objections.

Richardson told CBS that Schmidt’s presence on the trip had nothing to do with Google.

“I invited Eric. He is going as a private citizen,” Richardson said. “This is not a Google trip.”

Perhaps. “We do not comment on personal travel,” a Google spokeswoman said in response to questions.

But since stepping down as Google’s CEO in 2011, Schmidt has continued to serve as the search giant’s most visible public face. The significance of showing that face in Pyongyang isn’t lost on North Korea, Cha says.

“I don’t know if it’s a good opportunity for Google. But it’s a good opportunity for the North Korean leadership to signal to the world that they’re serious about going forward,” he says.

(Continued at the link below)

HTTP://WWW.WIRED.COM/BUSINESS/2013/01/ERIC-SCHMIDT-NORTH-KOREA/