Is Singapore a Surveillance State?
Tags: discuss, security, datascience, startup
Published: 2021-11-19 20:04:25

Recently, I stumbled across a article recommended by Google News. The article was written by **Rest of World** called [Singapore’s tech-utopia dream is turning into a surveillance state nightmare](https://restofworld.org/2021/singapores-tech-utopia-dream-is-turning-into-a-surveillance-state-nightmare/) given it's a super click baity title. 

So I took the plunge and read the article, to my horror the article was really a messy piece of writing. That is littered with a jigsaw puzzle of tech projects in Singapore to frame a narrative that Singapore is a surveillance state. While bashing local tech community efforts like [better.sg](https://better.sg/) in the good work they had done.

What surprises me the most were the reporter in misquoting and being shady of the article they are publishing.

I had gotten this from Facebook which the reporter had gotten one of them as their source. Nothing in this email says anything about being surveillance state. You can imagine how a person might feel when the article was published.
![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/eqcq049brx2x45eqdnht.png)

To be honest, I am one of those people that is against mass surveillance. Especially when my country started rolling out their contact tracing app using bluetooth called [TraceTogether](https://www.tracetogether.gov.sg/). I was initially against on the prospects of installing a tracking app on my phone. But thankfully, after reading about [GovTech](https://www.tech.gov.sg/) our version of the [Government Digital Services](https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/government-digital-service) in the UK or [US Digital Service](https://www.usds.gov/) in the US.

They were focusing on creating a small portable version of bluetooth token for TraceTogether. What went above and beyond is that they invited prominent hardware hackers or hardware enthusiasts like [Andrew Bunnie Hung](https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5820) to do a tear down of the bluetooth token. Which they really don't need to do this, given they had all the power to do this forcefully without listening to the people on the ground.

After reading multiple articles on the tear down of these bluetooth token, this gave me confidence to get one for myself and for my family serving my parents who is less technology savvy like me.

Early this year, these same bluetooth tokens was was used for a criminal investigation, almost immediately the Singapore government spring forth and setup [laws](https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/tracetogether-data-legislation-7-categories-police-covid-19-393666) on the use of these tokens for criminal investigation. 

I hope for anyone who has read that [article](https://restofworld.org/2021/singapores-tech-utopia-dream-is-turning-into-a-surveillance-state-nightmare/) by **Rest of World** could make your own decisions if Singapore is really a surveillance state due to our local tech projects and communities promoting mass surveillance to gather your personal data. I leave this to you my dear readers to discuss on the article or about mass surveillance.