Poverty-stricken dictatorship North Korea says the leak of NSA web-snooping project PRISM shows that the US is the “kingpin” of civil-rights abuses.

An op-ed in the Norks' state newspaper Minju Joson declared allegations of American spooks trawling through phone and internet usage records indicate that we're all “subject to the espionage that has been applied indiscriminately by the US intelligence institution".

"This clearly proves once again the US is a kingpin of human rights abuses as it puts the world under its watch network and has conducted espionage against mankind," the official KCNA news agency cited the paper as saying.

“Each individual is entitled to live and develop with dignity as a social being… But in American society, where the jungle law prevails, only the strong men's rights over the weak men are recognised,” the commentary added, according to Reuters.

The paper also said that the Obama administration's claims that it was only trying to stop terrorism were “just a lame excuse”.

Meanwhile, North Korea - ruled by ludicrous boy-king Kim Jong-un - is crippled by poverty; as a country has one of the worst records on human rights in the world; just one million telephones to its nearly 25 million people; no independent media; radios and TVs pre-tuned to government stations; no telephone directories; and all GSM cellular comms suspended since 2004.

Since the revelations from PRISM whistleblower Edward Snowden, tech companies like Apple, Facebook and Yahoo! have been forced to defend their compliance with US requests for sensitive information from spy agencies and law enforcement.

Officials have claimed that the surveillance of calls and web use was all perfectly legal and above board and that agencies had strict provisions in place about how and what data was accessed.

Snowden, who was accused of being a traitor for the leak and is believed to be taking refuge in Hong Kong, has said that he revealed the operations to counter “a litany of lies” from top spooks and officials to US Congress about America's electronic surveillance activities. ®