Google Earth puts North Korea Labour camps on the map | Hacker News Reader

Google Earth puts North Korea Labour camps on the map

rte.ie

79 pointschemcoder28 comments

Misleading title. Google did not mark the labour camps, a human rights activist made a map of the labour camps with Google Earth.

That's your quibble? The activist was able to mark them on the map, because google had hi-rez images of the camps on their maps.

Google doing so would imply them actively doing something politically sensitive which adds an interesting dimension to the story which the title implies is there but it looks like in fact isn't?

I had the same quibble. This article even goes on to make the connection to Schmidts trip. The two subject matters have no single fiber connecting them.

"putting on the map" does not imply marking

Actually, I think it does. It implied action taken by Google to find the data and add it to the map. Huge difference between Google decided to take these actions and add the data and Google built a tool that allows others to do the same.

Just had an interesting thought: what would be the legal implications should a private party mount a recon drone effort against North Korea?

Assume there was some way to launch small-ish drones from international waters and fly them to such stated labor camps to take pictures/do whatever which did not include any weapons?

What if this effort was a decentralized grass roots activism effort?

Assume DPRK was to simply attempt to shoot down said drones, what other recourse, aside from doing something like attacking South Korea or something, would they have.

Finally what other international laws would be broken by this activity? Would the countries where the drone pilots/owners were from be either inclined or required to prosecute these activists? If so, under what laws?

I'm pretty sure the subtle legalities would be lost on the North Koreans, so they'll definitely shoot down the drone and probably torpedo the boat. They'll find out the nationalities of the activists and boat and raise a stink so high, you'll probably get in trouble with your own government who'll charge you with god knows what (some Light Treason?)

South Korean Christian groups have been launching weather balloons into North Korea for a long time, as has the SK military apparently (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/world/asia/28korea-balloon...). NK doesn't like it one bit, but it still goes on.

Not sure how much of a difference the balloons being powered drone would make.

Do it, everyone else is.

;-)

Possibly, the Logan Act[1] could be applied.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Act

More people need to think proactively like you. Just think, if HN created a design / strategy wiki so that the resourceful, intellectual minds here could collaborate on a rescue plan. The results could be amazing - and potentially historic.

What kind of wiki would be good for uploading technical drawings, member discussions etc?

Are there any other similar prison camps elsewhere in the world, or is North Korea unique?

North Korea is unique in the sheer brutality and scale of the system, but Myanmar/Burma has remote prison camps and the Russia's present-day version of the Gulag is no picnic either.

Myanmar: http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&ALID...

Russia: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/10/ins...

We have prisons where people work producing military equipment, and how much one needs to go to prison?

How much law lobbying is done by prison owners?

I'm not familiar with American prison conditions but I suspect they aren't as bad as this: http://www.utsalumni.org/news/how-one-man-escaped-from-a-nor...

They could hardly be worse. That doesn't make them good, though.

Came here to say the same. USA has hundreds of thousands of prisoners toiling away in Georgia and other states. They are simply better fed slaves, but slaves the same. Probably makes it worse that they are mostly black.

Also, they have labor strikes,

http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20101209231616269

Also, they have cell phones.

http://www.wsbradio.com/news/news/local/growing-problem-cell...

Also, they were convicted in trials, for violating laws that were written by an elected legislature, and signed into law by an elected president. They were also provided an attorney, and have an appeals process at their disposal.

Seriously, yes, our prison system is really, really screwed up, but we got here largely out of public myopia and apathy, and to indicate we arrived at this place for reasons bearing any similarity to North Korea's is ignorant, at best.

Actually, they probably weren't convicted in trials, especially if their crimes were federal. 90% of them are probably there due to taking a plea bargain. They may or may not be guilty, since plea bargaining makes a guilty plea with a lighter sentence more attractive than proving your own innocence in a way that guarantees financial ruin and risks an extremely harsh sentence.

If it was a Federal trial, then they're in Federal prison, not the system run by Georgia, which is what we're discussing here.

There are Federal prisons in Georgia.

I made the mistake of assuming that labor camps were found in State systems only. I have since found out about Unicor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Prison_Industries

It's also incredibly likely that plea bargaining is responsible for much of the convictions at the state level as well. I'd be very surprised if a pathology at the federal level didn't exist at the state level as well.

I will slap my wife a little, here and there, not much, she deserves it, but damn, have you seen what Joe have done to his wife, he broke her arm and sent her to hospital, he is a monster!

This is simply not relevant and it reads a bit like a "tu quoque" argument from a North Korean apologist. It doesn't do them justice to call these "prison camps", they are gulags, they are concentration camps for political prisoners. Visiting them would be to revisit some of the worst horrors of the 20th century as seen in Nazi death camps or Stalinist gulags. The only reasons why these horrors haven't driven the west to action are that information about these camps are very difficult to get out and also there is very little we could do about the problem without causing millions of deaths (of South Koreans too) in the process.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com