Tech vs. Tyranny

Meredith Bragg

This March at the technology conference South by Southwest, a group of international dissidents collected USB drives to be wiped clean, filled with news and other media, and smuggled into countries with oppressive governments. Passersby who wanted to donate a drive could do so by shoving it into the mouth of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il. "The struggle for freedom used to be about who has more guns," says the Human Rights Foundation's Thor Halvorssen. "Now information is a key component."