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Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by pki on Friday May 15, 2015 @12:58PM (#9551910)
>the country's telecoms regulator ordered monitoring applications be installed on the smartphones of Koreans aged 18 and below

This is disgusting to read, in all seriousness. Not allowed to have a blog without linking it to their SSN, not allowed to play games without linking it to their SSN, all communications monitored, chat logged.. holy shit. Getting a mobile phone also requires one.. (and that's not even counting the heavy internet censorship, porn illegality and free speech restrictions)

Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by sooheon on Friday May 15, 2015 @01:13PM (#9552024)
It's infuriating to live in a country with such outstanding tech infrastructure to be shackled with these insane policies. Not to mention ActiveX and eight different plugin downloads for nearly any transaction, Spring/Java being considered the cutting edge in web development, and the downright Fascist porn restrictions (no I'm not bitter).
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by pki on Friday May 15, 2015 @01:21PM (#9552072)
Almost every Korean site tries to force feed some malware rootkit from ahnlab or nprotect, this is even more disturbing when you note that ahnlab's founder is apparently part of the Korean government now

Though Korea did result in one of the funniest things I've ever seen: apparently a lot of Korean companies have a strong need to "hide their proprietary website's source code" by iframing their pages multiple layers deep and making every link javascript:GoToAboutUs() so the url doesn't show up, and then window.locationing it

Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by curiously on Friday May 15, 2015 @05:52PM (#9553896)
Dr. Ahn even tried to run for president and likely to try again in the future.

Mention 'snowden' or 'privacy' and people won't bat an eye in Korea I bet. Pretty much same with most countries. People just don't seem to give a damn, the same old 'im not a criminal so I am okay with catching terrorists by spying and controlling the rest of the population'.

Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by sho_hn on Friday May 15, 2015 @03:43PM (#9553161)
The ActiveX thing is sort of an interesting historical accident. As a Korean on this site you probably know the details much better, but for onlookers: Korea decided to develop, specify and make mandatory for ecommerce it's own 128-bit block cipher called SEED, back when the US had a crypto export embargo on crypto past 40bit (Europeans, too, will remember the International Editions of browsers like Netscape Navigator), which was deemed not good enough. This ended up being implemented and officially accredited as an ActiveX control, and for the longest time there was no framework in place to accredit other implementations. Mozilla actually implemented SEED in the hopes it might be helpful, but ended up dropping it again later. This situation remains unsolved until now, although every couple of months there's a news story of supposed gov plans to do to better soon.
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by digi_owl on Saturday May 16, 2015 @06:01AM (#9555586)
I still recall the shitstorm that was PGP. A 128-bit public key encryption system as a downloadable binary. My first encounter with the insanity that is international politics.
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by seanmcdirmid on Friday May 15, 2015 @07:34PM (#9554316)
Hey, at least you don't live in China....
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by netheril96 on Saturday May 16, 2015 @04:33AM (#9555429)
As a Chinese citizen, I regular browse the Internet through a VPN server in South Korea just so that I can use Google to solve my technical problems. And Gmail. And stackoverflow. And travis-ci. And GitHub Gist. And Rubygems.
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by seanmcdirmid on Saturday May 16, 2015 @06:20AM (#9555618)
I've given up on VPNs...they just seem to be so flaky that after you pay your one year subscription fee, they are then blocked by the government.

I just use Bing (disclosure: MS employee but would like search engine choice).

Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by c1 on Saturday May 16, 2015 @08:43AM (#9555876)
Red Apricot (Hong Xing) have been working well for almost a year.

It's a Chrome extension. Based on sockets proxy.

Occasionally, it got blocked, but they would recover it in the next day.

Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by netheril96 on Sunday May 17, 2015 @09:19PM (#9562460)
Buy a VPS and set up your own VPN. It is much cheaper and less likely to be targeted.
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by molikto on Friday May 15, 2015 @10:01PM (#9554735)
Hi, what's your current project now?
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by seanmcdirmid on Saturday May 16, 2015 @12:31AM (#9555065)
Same as always, working on a grand live programming demo for the end of this summer.
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by ygmelnikova on Friday May 15, 2015 @03:02PM (#9552881)
What kind of degenerate society likens the restriction of teenager's ability to view porn to Fascism?
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by pki on Friday May 15, 2015 @03:08PM (#9552926)
I should point out that they killed off (any form of gay, really) LGBT-rights sites with the reason "perversion", not just porn

If we're talking teenagers, imagine googling sex ed terms and having to enter your ssn[0]

[0]http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/03/age-verification-at...

Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by guard-of-terra on Friday May 15, 2015 @03:20PM (#9553000)
Not talking on society level but I watched porn from maybe 12 onwards. Have problems with that? Know how I should have lived better than I?

You can't restrict anything anyway. Any filter is porous and everything gets thru. One hardcore image is enough.

The only thing you really achieve is humiliating the teenager, make him feel not in control of his life.

I know that you try to restrain me like I'm a parrot instead of taking to me; you are explicit in trying to conceal from me something that you point me at by this attempt.

Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by vacri on Friday May 15, 2015 @06:42PM (#9554123)
Nice moving of the goalposts there. An authoritarian intrusion into private behaviour is an example of an activity done by a fascist state, hence the GP's adjective. But your comment converts that into the entire ideology of facism.

Also, nice job inserting 'teenagers' into a comment that made no mention of any age group.

Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by ygmelnikova on Friday May 15, 2015 @10:39PM (#9554827)
As mentioned above, the article is referring to those 'under 18'. Does your 'state' not restrict access to porn magazines for those under 18 now?

In Florida it's a felony. Florida Statute 847.012 - Max 5 years.

Why? Because it's degenerate, and <i>your</i> state agrees.

Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by vacri on Saturday May 16, 2015 @07:43AM (#9555763)
Porn magazines? How quaint. Speaking of moving the goalposts again, the porn control in the article is a mandated smartphone app.

And no, my country does not require minors to install state-mandated applications on their smartphones. For any reason, porn or otherwise.

Also, pornography isn't degenerate. It's just sex. Exploitative pornagraphy is bad, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it. But we generally prevent minors from accessing it because they're not emotionally equipped to deal with sex stuff - same reason we have age of consent laws. Or do you also think that sex itself is degenerate, and that's why there are laws around teenagers and who they can have sex with?

Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by briandh on Friday May 15, 2015 @05:04PM (#9553680)
"the downright Fascist porn restrictions (no I'm not bitter)" doesn't say anything about teenagers specifically.
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by ygmelnikova on Friday May 15, 2015 @10:17PM (#9554778)
"the country's telecoms regulator ordered monitoring applications be installed on the smartphones of Koreans aged 18 and below"
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by briandh on Saturday May 16, 2015 @02:49AM (#9555256)
I read the article too.

sooheon, who suggested that he/she lives in Korea, made no such stipulation. Of note, distribution (and maybe possession -- I am not sure) of porn is illegal in Korea in general -- not just for those under 18.

Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by poikniok on Friday May 15, 2015 @03:07PM (#9552922)
Any society that is not fascist?
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by r00fus on Friday May 15, 2015 @04:30PM (#9553480)
The one that sees this as a slippery slope to further intrusion into private life...
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by curiously on Friday May 15, 2015 @05:53PM (#9553906)
Confucius would've loved you
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by guard-of-terra on Saturday May 16, 2015 @05:47AM (#9555562)
More like a sweet pair of Milonov and Mizulina, judging by her (?) nickname.
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by Lawtonfogle on Friday May 15, 2015 @01:40PM (#9552238)
Every day the envelope gets pushed further and further. This is one of the driving factors behind my shifting view to be behind an unlimited Freedom of Speech/Information viewpoint. No restriction on any speech/information, including monitoring that would have a chilling effect. I realize it isn't perfect, but I think it is better than the alternative. Also, someone needs to take the extreme stance because if the only two groups are the ones who are willing to compromise and the others at the opposite extreme, the latter is going to eventually win.
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by Forbo on Friday May 15, 2015 @02:50PM (#9552808)
I hate to play devil's advocate, but what about things like intellectual property or (ugh, even saying this makes me feel like a scumbag politician) child pornography? I can see the argument for the virtual variety of CP, but what about the real kind? I'm genuinely curious how the unlimited viewpoint can be defended against these types of arguments.
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by akira2501 on Friday May 15, 2015 @03:08PM (#9552929)
> but what about the real kind?

You mean the kind of child abuse that's been occurring for centuries before we even thought up the electron? Or are just worried about how these images of abuse end up getting distributed?

If it's the latter, then fine, censor the internet. If it's the former, you're going to need a more comprehensive plan.

Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by olefoo on Friday May 15, 2015 @03:11PM (#9552947)
Intellectual property is ideal theft. It exists mainly to employ lawyers and enrich middlemen. That some creators are accidentally rewarded is a byproduct that is used to justify the rest of it.
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by innguest on Saturday May 16, 2015 @02:08AM (#9555206)
There are very good counter arguments you can easily find online.

I'll give you my favorites.

For intellectual property, it is not real property. Property is the category of things that are material and can exchange hands. Data, like speech, does not get literally exchanged, but copied. So there's no such thing as intellectual property.

Imagine you can memorize whole books. Would that be illegal? What if your friends could phone you and ask you to recite some paragraphs from memory, would that be illegal? What if you were part of a group of people that memorized the books they own and they ask each other to recite over the phone one page a day from a book they don't have? A hard-drive is a shortcut for that brain capacity we don't yet have. But if we did have that capacity to memorize, it would not be illegal. So instead of enjoying hard-drives to freely books and songs, we are criminalizing an arbitrary human enhancement.

For child pornography, I find it hard to justify the suppression of criminal evidence. We all should fear a government that has the power to arrest someone and suppress the evidence for their crime. If someone kills someone else even if just to film it, that would be a crime (or many crimes) but the video should not be illegal to possess. Evidence of gruesome deaths (intentional or not) are likewise legal to possess. What should be illegal is the act in itself, not the documentation with which we prove the crime.

Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by digi_owl on Saturday May 16, 2015 @06:20AM (#9555621)
The logic of child porn legislation seems to mimic that of drug laws. Catching the suppliers are hard (multiple jurisdictions etc) so instead catch the consumers and so hope to dry up the market.

Thing is that we are dealing with a mangled sex drive here, and you can't get any more basic than that (the sex drive can even override the drive for self preservation).

The only way to really solve the problem would be to find a way to test for it clinically, and some way to rectify the problem at a neural level. But i wonder what other devils we will uncork if we ever get the means to do so...

Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by Lawtonfogle on Monday May 18, 2015 @09:36AM (#9564297)
Simple. Once we have a good test, the one's who test positive will be institutionalized for life, likely kept on drugs. It would be to the extent that it might be more humane to take them out and shoot them. Especially if this test would work while they were still children.
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by TazeTSchnitzel on Saturday May 16, 2015 @02:36AM (#9555238)
This is fine for the most privileged, but unlimited speech means unlimited ability for harassment.
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by quotemstr on Saturday May 16, 2015 @02:59AM (#9555274)
Fundamentally, the risk of bad outcomes is the price we pay for living in a free society. I would rather recognize the right of everyone to say anything, and occasionally do great things, than cower behind speech restrictions designed to produce a safe, bland uniformity.
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by TazeTSchnitzel on Saturday May 16, 2015 @04:57AM (#9555471)
> I would rather recognize the right of everyone to say anything, and occasionally do great things, than cower behind speech restrictions designed to produce a safe, bland uniformity.

"Safe, bland uniformity"? Lives are at stake. People's safety is at stake.

Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by quotemstr on Saturday May 16, 2015 @04:57PM (#9557588)
"Safety"? Coming from your ilk, which calls all dissent "harassment", that's a terrifying and ominous word.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_of_Public_Safety

Mean words on the internet put nobody's life at risk.

Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by TazeTSchnitzel on Sunday May 17, 2015 @09:27AM (#9559937)
> "Safety"? Coming from your ilk, which calls all dissent "harassment",

Well aren't you a nasty piece of work. Using a straw man to claim harassment doesn't exist.

> Mean words on the internet put nobody's life at risk.

Completely untrue. People have been bullied into suicide many, many times. Vulnerable people can have their address revealed and receive physical attacks or be outright murdered. Hate speech can incite violence.

Get out of your fantasy land. Speech and action are not divorced, and words usually hurt far more than sticks or stones.

Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by Lawtonfogle on Monday May 18, 2015 @09:37AM (#9564300)
Limited speech means unlimited ability for harassment by the government. I'd rather deal with an individual.
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by jkot on Friday May 15, 2015 @01:28PM (#9552140)
Is it North or South Korea?
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by mg1982 on Friday May 15, 2015 @01:34PM (#9552185)
It's important to remember that up until 60 years ago they weren't in any way separate from one another, and up until 20-30 years ago when the south's economy took off, there was little material difference between how the two countries were run.
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by curiously on Friday May 15, 2015 @05:56PM (#9553921)
night and day difference. It makes me cringe when people try to group them up together. If they were indeed similar and identical they should've produced the same result but it hasn't, one is a failed state and will forever be noted as an embarrassment to human race, the other a thriving developed country.

North Korea even had a head start by a far margin. Up until 1970s, North Korea was pretty much the better equipped, better fed, and stronger military force.

South Korea would not have survived had it not had military dictatorship guarding against North Korean aggression both externally and internally (lot of bitter South Koreans wanting communism).

Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by Zigurd on Friday May 15, 2015 @01:30PM (#9552156)
It's "our" Korea. That makes all the difference.
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by sho_hn on Friday May 15, 2015 @03:38PM (#9553124)
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by amyjess on Friday May 15, 2015 @03:28PM (#9553053)
On top of that, Korean Internet connections come with mandatory porn filters in order to protect the local prostitution industry.

It's shameful.

Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by noobermin on Friday May 15, 2015 @08:56PM (#9554545)
Do you have a link for this? As crazy as the linked article is, I find this hard to believe about SK too.
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by bjornsteffanson on Saturday May 16, 2015 @12:57AM (#9555100)
Typing this response from downtown Seoul, and can confirm that censorship is very prevalent. There are thousands of blacklisted sites -- they are simply forwarded to http://warning.or.kr/, which reads "This site has been legally blocked by government regulations." The numbers on the table below are different agencies you can call to appeal the block if you think it's unwarranted. Most people who are annoyed by it just VPN to Japan and ignore it.
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by fossuser on Friday May 15, 2015 @04:14PM (#9553370)
Most of these 'teen alerts' are related to sex - which somehow makes this even worse.
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by digi_owl on Saturday May 16, 2015 @05:57AM (#9555573)
What is glossed over by most of western media is that SK was a right wing dictatorship until the 90s. And to this day holds a very conservative and paternal attitude.

Likely the reason it gets a pass is because it has the shit can that is NK next door.

In a sense the Korean peninsula is the cold war in a microcosm.

Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by task_queue on Friday May 15, 2015 @01:44PM (#9552269)
At least they're open about it.
Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by braythwayt on Friday May 15, 2015 @04:17PM (#9553381)
> all communications monitored, chat logged.. holy shit.

It is disturbing to read that Korea is forcing its teenagers to live under the kind of oppressive surveillance that is enforced by countries like the United States, Canada, Britain, and Australia.

Re:Don't text 'beer' in Korea: Words that trigger teen alerts by guard-of-terra on Saturday May 16, 2015 @06:45PM (#9557929)
Is there anybody defending those? Unless there are, your downvoting is well deserved.