Mad about free speech and North Korea? Hack back, says group
Madison Park, CNN
Updated
2:44 AM EST, Wed February 11, 2015
Story highlights
North Korean defector who lives in U.S. calls picture pulling "embarrassing"
Group seeks to harness anger over film being pulled, turned into attention on North Korea
Hackathons meant to find ways to disseminate information in North Korea
(CNN) —
Jo Jin-hye, who escaped North Korea, wanted to watch “The Interview.”
The comedy lampoons North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whose dynasty she loathes. Her father died in custody of North Korean security forces, who tied him by his wrist in a torturous position for 10 days without food. Her younger brother starved to death and her older sister is missing.
Sony Pictures announce the controversial comedy "The Interview," a film depicting the assassination of North Korea's leader, will have a limited release on Christmas Day. The studio previously announced it would shelve plans to release the film after it became the victim of a cyber attack thought to have originated in North Korea. Click to see how the saga unfolded.
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Damian Dovarganes/AP
Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
In June 2014, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said "The Interview" was "the most undisguised terrorism." "If the U.S. administration connives at and patronizes the screening of the film, it will invite a strong and merciless countermeasure," he said.
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Getty Images
Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
In November, "The Guardians of Peace," a hacker group with suspected ties to North Korea, said that it had hacked Sony Pictures and released massive amounts of data. The group added that there would be more leaks.
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Shutterstock
Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
December 5 -- Hackers exposed the security numbers of 47,423 people including Conan O'Brien, Sylvester Stallone, Rebel Wilson, Judd Apatow and Frank Stallone.
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Dave Bjerke/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images/File
Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
In early December, hackers emailed Sony employees warning that "your family will be in danger." Guardians of Peace have claimed the email did not come from them. The FBI confirmed in a statement they were aware of the email and are investigating the "person or group responsible for the recent attack on the Sony Pictures network." Many security experts said the hack increasingly pointed to North Korea.
Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
December 7 -- North Korea's state-run propaganda arm said they were not responsible for the Sony hack attack but applauded it as "a righteous deed of the supporters and sympathizers with the DPRK." They added they could not be responsible as America is "a country far across the ocean."
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Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images
Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
December 8 -- Another message appeared on a website saying: "We have already given our clear demand to the management team of SONY, however, they have refused to accept. Do carry out our demand if you want to escape us. And, Stop immediately showing the movie of terrorism which can break the regional peace and cause the War!"
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David Goldman/AP
Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
Sony Hack Timeline —
December 11 -- Another leaked email revealed a controversial exchange between a Sony executive and a producer, speculating over President Barack Obama's favorite films, referring to "Django Unchained" and other movies about African Americans such as "12 Years a Slave."
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Pete Souza/White House via Getty Images
Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
December 15 -- Sony Pictures asked news organizations to stop examining and publicizing the information made public by the hackers. Attorney David Boies said that the hackers' tactics are part of "an ongoing campaign explicitly seeking to prevent [Sony] from distributing a motion picture."
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Wi McNamee/Getty
Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
December 16 -- In an email to Sony Pictures' co-chair Amy Pascal, producer Scott Rudin called Angelina Jolie "minimally talented" and a "spoiled brat" with a "rampaging... ego". Jolie and Pascal were later photographed running into each other at an event with Jolie giving Pascal a nasty look. The leaks also revealed the secret aliases of some well-known actors such as Tom Hanks, Sara Michelle Gellar and Jessica Alba.
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Courtesy Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images
Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
December 16 -- The New York premiere of "The Interview" was canceled after "The Guardians of Peace" posted a threat against moviegoers. The message said: "We will clearly show it to you at the very time and places 'The Interview' be shown, including the premiere, how bitter fate those who seek fun in terror should be doomed to," the hacking group said. "The world will be full of fear. Remember the 11th of September 2001."
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CTMG/Sony
Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
December 17 -- Two former Sony employees sued the company for failing to protect their private information. The plaintiffs seek to form a class action lawsuit of up to 15,000 former employees. The plaintiffs want Sony to provide them with five years of credit monitoring, bank monitoring, identity theft insurance and credit restoration services. They also called for Sony to be subject to regular privacy audits.
Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
December 18 -- Sony decided to cancel the release of "The Interview," a decision that sparked outrage among celebrities and politicians. A movie theater in Texas announced they would offer a free screening of Team America -- which features the leader's father Kim Jong Il -- instead until Paramount shut that down too. Sony also downplayed the possibility that the film could be released online.
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David Goldman/AP
Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
December 19 -- President Obama said in a news conference that Sony "made a mistake" in response to the studio's decision to cancel its plans to release "The Interview" on Christmas Day. He told CNN later that week that the Sony hack was an act of "cybervandalism", not "an act of war".
Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
December 21 -- Sony Pictures' CEO Michael Lynton responds to President Obama's comments, telling CNN "we did not cave or back down." Mr Lynton also said Sony were looking into releasing "The Interview" on the internet but no major distributor has volunteered to release the film.
Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
How the Sony hack unfolded —
December 22 -- North Korea's internet goes black for more than nine hours. The cause of the outage is unknown, but experts have suggested that a lone hacker could have carried it out, others even argued that the North Korean government could have deliberately disconnected themselves.
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Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images
Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
How the Sony hack unfolded —
December 23 -- Sony Pictures announced "The Interview" will be released on Christmas Day but only in a limited number of theatres. The studio's CEO Michael Lynton said: "while we hope this is only the first step of the film's release, we are proud to make it available to the public and to have stood up to those who attempted to suppress free speech." So far more than 200 independently-owned theatres have agreed to show the film.
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Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty
Jo escaped North Korea with her mother and sister, and was granted asylum in the United States in 2008, where they now reside in a quiet suburb.
When told “The Interview” would not be shown in theaters, Jo asked, “Are we that afraid? It’s sort of embarrassing. I thought America is strong. If North Korea is that frightening, I think that speaks for itself.”
If North Korea hacked the United States, she said, “Of course, people have to hack North Korea.”
Satire and North Korea
There’s nothing like canceling a satire to anger a nation. From celebrities to politicians, just about anybody with a social media account has been venting about Sony Picture’s decision to pull “The Interview” from U.S. theaters. Critics say it’s caving to hackers and muzzling free speech.
The FBI announced North Korea is officially responsible for the cyberattack on Sony Pictures, an attack law enforcement officials called a “game changer.” In a press conference Friday, Obama said the United States will respond “proportionally” to the attack,though he would not say how it would specifically retaliate.
“Right now people are angry in the U.S., people are angry at Sony,” said Alex Gladstein, director of institutional affairs at Human Rights Foundation. “It’s not the greatest movie of all time, but they can’t even go see it.”
He said he’d like to harness the interest about the film and North Korea to “get people to hack North Korea back in a educational way, to look at what we’re doing, some of the groups of North Koreans who’ve escaped, who are hacking for educational purposes. If we can hack North Korea back, it’d be pretty powerful.”
Gladstein doesn’t mean hacking in the sense of exposing emails or using the tactics of the Sony hackers, who call themselves the Guardians of Peace.
It’s a type of hacking “to disrupt North Korea and help end the Kim regime’s monopoly of knowledge. It’s nonviolent and we’re figuring out the best way to get Hollywood movies, Korean dramas and offline Wikipedias, different art, music into North Korea.”
For years, activists have been disseminating radios, launching balloons near the border and circulating secret cell phones, USB drives through smugglers to communicate with North Koreans – who are at great threat if they’re caught. They face severe punishment, imprisonment and even death for possessing or watching foreign media.
“Satire and creative thinking are dangerous for dictatorships and the ability to control society. It’s losing control and it’svery afraid of that,” Gladstein said.
The group wants to drop DVDs of “Team America: World Police,” a 2004 film that pokes fun at North Korea’s former leader, Kim Jong Il, along with several other movies in a campaign it’s calling #Hackthemback.
The country’s human rights record is under increasing scrutiny as the UN General Assembly called for the Security Council to refer North Korea to the International International Criminal Court and sanction those most responsible for “crimes against humanity.”
Silicon Valley meets North Korean defectors
In August, a group of human rights activists, coders, engineers and Silicon Valley types gathered in SOMA, a San Francisco neighborhood known for its concentration of start-ups and tech companies.
North Korean defectors flew into the event, called Hack North Korea to share their insights in spreading information inside the country.
DVDs and Korean dramas give North Koreans a peek into the forbidden, outside world they had never known.
“When North Koreans describe their ‘Aha’ moment, when they realize they were lied to by their government, they got information from a movie or reading a book or seeing something – something that jived,” said Alex Lloyd, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, who also co-organized the event.
Some of the hackathon ideas included retro tech like smuggling pagers into North Korea to decidedly no tech, like a slingshot to fling media across the border. One centered on using the Raspberry Pi, a popular microcomputer that fits in the palm of the hand.
The winning idea at the hackathon was a satellite receiver that would get broadcast signals from South Korea. That team has an 18-year-old hacker, named Justice Suh, who traveled to South Korea this year to show a prototype to North Korea activist groups.
If the receivers are small enough, they could be smuggled into the country for North Koreans to receive outside information, Suh said.
The first hackathon was a test and future North Korea-focused events will likely focus on solving certain technical issues, Lloyd said.
“What’s lasting is the relationships made between the North Korean community living in South Korea and Silicon Valley,” he said.
