North Korean pirate radio: homemade devices deliver banned broadcasts

The situation in North Korea is one of the greatest humanitarian crises of our time, and perhaps even of the ages. As engineers, we have a lot of power to help the people of North Korea. Our goal should be a constant funnel of information from the outside world, just as this radio provides (albeit in a limited capacity). Free flow of information is not only incredibly powerful, but also relatively cheap to spread. It should be our job to find ways to spread it into North Korea.

With Google and Facebook's balloon/drone internet access programs, I suspect the availability of Internet -- and subsequently information -- in North Korea is only going to grow. In preparation for this, we should be developing solutions that enable cheap, surreptitious reception of information/internet for North Koreans. I would like to see organizations like LiNK (liberty in North Korea) get far more attention, and use that publicity to recruit engineering partnerships.

If we -- engineers, startups, big tech co's (the collective engineering community) -- pool together our knowledge and resources, partnering with organizations like LiNK, then we can drive real grassroots change within North Korea.

I don't know exactly what the immediate next steps are, but it's clear to me that from a humanitarian perspective, North Korea is an open field where tech can generate far more progress than it can in developed countries, where solving first world problems adds comparatively little to general well-being. One thing I know for sure, is that leadership on this front needs to come from the big tech companies. Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft all have thousands of talented engineers, billions of dollars, and incredible resources at their disposal. Yet not one of them has done a single thing to advance the cause of liberty in North Korea. Why not?

While Western governments are busy sitting on their hands, too scared of China to make any aggressive moves in North Korea, it should be the tech companies -- those at the forefront of engineering and human progress -- who are leading the charge.

Who's going to step up?

This type of stuff reminds me of prison-tech.