Why it’s so hard for U.S. spies to figure out North Korea

The internet problem. The National Security Agency, which hacks computers and intercepts email, has had some success pulling bits and bytes out of North Korea, former officials say, but North Korea is much less forgiving than most of its targets. That’s because most of the country is not connected to the internet and few people have cellphones. To the extent that the regime communicates electronically, it has made increasing use of encryption, experts say.

“If you look at that satellite picture [of Asia] of the lights at night from the satellite, there is one dark area with no lights on, and that is North Korea,” Coats told Congress. “Their broadband is extremely limited. So using that as an access to collection — we get very limited results.”