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Alex Chilton, lead singer and guitarist of the Box Tops and Big
Star, was born December 28, 1950.

He died in 2010.

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Welcome to program 132 of Shortwave Radiogram.

I'm Kim Andrew Elliott in Arlington, Virginia USA.

Here is the lineup for today's program, in MFSK modes as noted:

  1:40 MFSK32: Program preview (now)
  2:45 Canada's new Arctic patrol ship might sail south*
  8:41 MFSK64: How North Korea controls outside information
15:07 This week's images*
27:20 MFSK32: Closing announcements

* with image(s)


Please send reception reports to radiogram@verizon.net

And visit http://swradiogram.net

Twitter: @SWRadiogram






From CBC News:

Canada's new Arctic patrol ships could be tasked with hurricane
relief

Murray Brewster
22 December 2019

The Canadian navy will take possession of two Arctic Offshore
Patrol Ships in the new year — and it looks like they'll be
spending as much time in the sunny south as they do in the Far
North.

Vice-Admiral Art McDonald, the commander of the navy, told CBC
News recently that military planners see the ships playing a role
in delivering disaster relief in the Caribbean, where hurricanes
have been increasing in size and destructive power.

"We can see a great opportunity to use this hurricane response as
we go forward," McDonald said in a year-end interview.
"Ironically, the Arctic offshore patrol vessel will find itself
equally spending its time between our Far North and down south in
support of our securing the continent."

The first of the long-awaited patrol ships, HMCS Harry DeWolf,
conducted sea trials a few weeks ago under the supervision of its
builder, Irving Shipbuilding of Halifax. It's due to be handed
over to the navy in the spring, McDonald said.

Some members of the ship's inaugural crew took part in the
shakedown to familiarize themselves with the new vessels.

"We've completed our training and we're ready to take it,"
McDonald said.

A second ship, HMCS Margaret Brooke, will be delivered to the
navy in the fall.

Irving's Halifax Shipyard originally was slated to deliver the
Harry DeWolf in 2018, but the deadline was pushed ahead to the
end of 2019 and then pushed again into 2020.

That new timeline puts the date of delivery nearly five years
after construction started.

McDonald said there are always delays when the first ships in a
new class of vessels are introduced and the navy is satisfied it
will receive fully functional, capable ships.

"We know that the lessons learned from tackling those production
challenges, they're being folded into the second ship and into
the third ship," he said.

Major component blocks of the third ship are being assembled at
the Halifax yard now, and company officials, speaking recently on
background, said production has become exponentially more
efficient since the completion of the second vessel. ...

CBC News recently was given access to the Harry DeWolf as
contractors completed last-minute work. Compared with previous
Canadian warships, its cabins and work areas are spacious and
high-tech.

McDonald said he believes the versatile design will make the ship
useful, not only for sovereignty and security patrols, but also
for research projects.

"We can bring on scientists," he said. "We can bring on teams
focused around missions that are larger than the navy as we go
forward."

Full text:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/arctic-offshore-patrol-ships-frigates-irving-canadian-navy-1.5404650

Image: HMCS Harry DeWolf ...

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Shortwave Radiogram now changes to MFSK64 ...


RSID: <<2019-12-27T00:38Z MFSK-64 @ 9265000+1500>>

This is Shortwave Radiogram in MFSK64

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From Radio Free Asia:

North Korean Authorities Adjust Strategies to Contain Outside
Information in Smartphone Era

Eugene Whong
18 December 2019

Authorities in North Korea are scrambling to figure out new ways
of limiting access to information about the outside world as
communications technology becomes more advanced.

A new report released Wednesday by the Washington-based Committee
for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) details how the North
Korean government has been reacting to the increased access to
information. Merely jamming shortwave radio broadcasts is no
longer enough in the smartphone era, so the authorities have had
to find innovative ways to slow the infiltration of information
from outside.

Authored by journalist Martyn Williams, who has been following
North Korea’s adoption of communications technology and media for
more than two decades, Digital Trenches: North Korea’s
Information Counter-Offensive focuses on three ways that North
Korea is dealing with its outside information problem: the legal
system, technology, and propaganda.

The report is based on interviews with 41 North Korean escapees
living in Seoul, and independent research that includes analysis
of North Korean media.

The Law

“The mass of foreign content that has entered the country from
the mid-2000s onwards has led to a curtailing of hard sentences
for all but the most serious crimes,” Williams wrote in the
report.

During a media event to launch the report, Williams said that
laws have become more lax because there are too many offenders
these days.

“It’s not that the government is necessarily giving up, I think
what it is, is it’s more of a reaction by the government, that
they realize they are losing this war,” he said.

“They can’t prosecute everybody, they can’t put everybody in jail
because there are just too many people,” Williams added.

The report shows how many who are caught watching or distributing
foreign media are able to escape punishment through bribery,
which has become more rampant in recent years.

“Driving this willingness of officials to accept bribes is the
changing North Korean economy and social system. As the State
economy has weakened, vital services, such as the public
distribution system for food, have been cut and that has affected
everyone, including security officials,” the report said.

It explained that commonplace bribery has created a two tiered
system wherein the rich can afford to consume content but the
poor have much more at stake if they are caught.

“If you get caught watching South Korean movies, you’re supposed
to go to prison. For those people of less-fortunate financial
backgrounds, they wouldn’t readily watch South Korean movies, but
for people who are rich enough to pay a bribe then they would
consume South Korean media,” said one interviewee in the report.

Paying to get out of trouble also appears easier to do the
farther away from Pyongyang offenders are when they are caught.
This is because economic hardship is more pronounced in rural
areas.

To catch people in the act, police will raid houses unannounced.

In the past this was fairly easy, and police could just cut power
to the areas they wanted to search, then enter homes and look for
VCRs or DVD players with tapes and discs that could not be
ejected. Advances in technology have made it more difficult, as
physical media can be stored on micro SD cards, which are smaller
than a fingernail and much easier to hide or smash if discovered.

Another way police catch offenders is through street inspections,
but this has also changed in the smartphone era, Williams said.

“These days when there is a street inspection, as well as
checking someone’s pockets, they’ll also ask for a cell phone,
and they’ll ask for the password to the cellphone,” he said.

“So they will go through the cellphone and they’ll look at the
pictures on the cell phone, they’ll look at videos on the
cellphone, they’ll look at chat messages you’ve been sending to
your friends, both to see what you’ve been talking about, but
also to see language you have been using that would indicate
you’re using some South Korean colloquialisms or something like
that. So people have to be very careful with what they’re doing
with their smartphones,” he said.

But even if the authorities are able to catch people in the act,
the focus of punishment has shifted from the media consumer to
distributors, the report says.

Propaganda

Williams notes that North Korea is attempting to increase the
production values of its domestic media to create content that
can be more engaging. When foreign media began producing content
in high-definition, it became far more aesthetically appealing to
viewers than anything produced by state media.

According to the report it was not until mid-2019 that news
programming on the state-run KCTV began broadcasting in HD, but
viewers still prefer foreign media because KCTV’s content is
“dry, propaganda-heavy and cannot compete with more interesting
content from overseas.”

Williams also analyzed news broadcasts to see how North Korea
preferred its people to see the outside world. During the press
event, he played an example of KCTV’s foreign news coverage,
which he said “paints a picture of the world that is in constant
chaos.”

The news broadcast, from Dec. 11, which Williams said was typical
of North Korean coverage of foreign news included stories about a
clash between Israel’s military and protesting Palestinians, a
shooting on a U.S. military base in Florida, and violent protests
in India.

Williams said after the clip that in analyzing more than a year
of these broadcasts, it is safe to say the outside world is
always presented as scary and dangerous. The news broadcasts
carried reports about weather disasters worldwide, shootings,
crimes and mass demonstrations in the U.S.

“One of the ways that they’re countering all this information
coming in, all of the stories show people suffering around the
world or people who are in conflict with their leaders.”

Williams also said that the government approves certain types of
media from abroad, such as sports or computer games, as they are
nonpolitical diversions. The government believes that if
consumers are preoccupied by playing simple games on their phones
or watching Premier League soccer, it will divert their attention
from foreign TV shows and movies.

Technology

The report also describes in detail some of the ways that the
North Korean authorities are able to use technology to prevent
the spread of outside information, particularly through their
ability to monitor cellphone activity and file sharing.

North Korean smartphones all have an application called “Red
Flag” running in the background that keeps a log of webpages
visited by users and randomly takes screenshots. These can be
viewed, but not deleted with another app called “Trace Viewer”

“The system is sinister in its simplicity. It reminds users that
everything they do on the device can be recorded and later viewed
by officials, even if it does not take place online. As such, it
insidiously forces North Koreans to self-censor in fear of a
device check that might never happen,” the report said.

A method to prevent the spread of media files that interviewees
described in the report was file watermarking, a method by which
every device that a particular file was played on is recorded in
the file’s data.

“North Korean smartphones and other devices leave a tag on USB
[flash drives] so they can trace which computers or mobile
devices have viewed them. People in North Korea prefer to watch
videos using foreign devices,” an interviewee said.

As the focus on punishment has shifted from the consumer to the
distributor, it has become easier for authorities to discover
distribution networks through the watermarks on the files. ...

Full text:
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/nk-hrnk-outside-information-12182019172925.html

Report (pdf):
https://www.hrnk.org/uploads/pdfs/Williams_Digital_Trenches_Web_FINAL.pdf



 

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This week's images ...

A winter scene at Hamilton College in Clifton, New York. From
bit.ly/2tGZHTe ...

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A street scene in Murmansk, Arctic Russia. From bit.ly/2ZnvhRY

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