The Social Laboratory

An anonymous reader writes: We often worry about technology and unscrupulous intelligence agencies driving us toward a surveillance state. But apparently Singapore already beat us to the punch. "Not only does the government keep a close eye on what its citizens write and say publicly, but it also has the legal authority to monitor all manner of electronic communications, including phone calls, under several domestic security laws aimed at preventing terrorism, prosecuting drug dealing, and blocking the printing of 'undesirable' material." They've used it to do good, like swiftly moving to contain the spread of infectious diseases and to figure out how the public wants policy problems solved. But they've also obliterated privacy and restricted what people can say and do. "Singaporeans speak, often reverently, of the "social contract" between the people and their government. They have consciously chosen to surrender certain civil liberties and individual freedoms in exchange for fundamental guarantees: security, education, affordable housing, health care." The article notes, "It's hard to know whether the low crime rates and adherence to the rule of law are more a result of pervasive surveillance or Singaporeans' unspoken agreement that they mustn't turn on one another, lest the tiny island come apart at the seams."

Comments

Education? Affordable housing? Healthcare?

[jeIIomizer]

I'm pretty sure it's not necessary to surrender fundamental liberties to get those.

But all this proves is that people too easily ignore history. Hundreds of millions of people abused throughout history by corrupt governments, and yet you want to give them the power to monitor people's communications? I'm sure your government, unlike all the other ones that came before it, is full of perfectly innocent little angels that will never abuse their powers or make mistakes. Furthermore, I'm sure your government will *always* be like that. So you can not only trust the people currently in your government, but every single person who will ever work for it. Yeah...

And it's not like privacy is a basic human need or anything.