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Comment by bschwindHN | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

Are we really comparing the DPRK with the US? This thread has jumped the shark. Anyone in the US could be a dissident -- it's called the first amendment. Unless you are from the People's Republic of Fantasia, there's a good chance your country isn't a shining example of freedom either. But, it seems that the fashion on HN is to complain about the US at every opportunity -- even within an article about North Korea.

This could be a story about Hilter and people would find a way to engage in moral relativism.

The point is that the USA is not the shining beacon of moral authority that it, and its peoples, claim it to be - and before we go off launching yet another military-industrial misadventure to 'solve' the problems of the world, we might ought to use some of those resources locally, at home, in our own - free, so far - societies, in order to improve the lives of our fellow humans.

It makes not one iota of difference if the human lives we improve are in Kaesong, North Korean, or Jackson, Indiana. Does it? Then, start at home: get rid of the NSA. Close Guantanomo. Cancel privatized prison systems that incarcerate more prisoners in the world than any other nation.

> fashion on HN is to complain about the US at every opportunity -- even within an article about North Korea

See "Whataboutism"

I don't know. While there's no literal comparison, I concede, it's possible the OP had a figurative one in mind.

Reading his argument charitably: the Snowden revelations showed us that the penetration of the tentacles of our surveillance is at least an order of magnitude greater than we imagined, and that many things we thought rendered it technically or economically infeasible are in fact quite feasible if the resources of the NSA are thrown at it. More significantly: our surveillance is fantastically disproportionate to the lyrical encomiums we sing to our free society and democracy and so forth. At least in North Korea it's par for the course.

Do you have access to the dprk's intranet, or how would you know?

That commenter doesn't have access to that country's internet. The commenter does have access to many of the rest. That supports the commenter's point already.

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