---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 4 Dec 1996 12:38:28 -0500 (EST) From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> To: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Singapore Sling -- A second look, from The Netly News The Netly News http://netlynews.com December 4, 1996 SINGAPORE SLING By Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com) Singapore seems to possess no more resolution than some primitive VR world. There is no dirt whatsoever, no muss, no furred fractal edge to things. Outside, the organic, florid as ever in the tropics, has been gardened into brilliant green, and all-too-perfect examples of itself. At least that's what William Gibson wrote about the country in Wired magazine three years ago. I'm in Singapore now to find out what's happened since then. Marvin Tay stands at the exit to the airport, waving a copy of the December issue of Wired in semaphore, as animated and affable as the corridors of the Changi Airtropolis are chilly and sterile. Marvin works at Information Frontiers Ltd, a local Internet firm. He's also my self-appointed tour guide and critic. "You've developed quite a reputation around here," he tells me on the drive into town. To Marvin, my criticisms of Singapore in previous columns were too harsh. The country is not a police state. Gibson was wrong. Singapore is not "Disneyland with a death penalty." Marvin is one of Singapore's growing number of digerati. Glued to his handphone, he tears around the island in a late-model Alfa Romeo that, thanks to the astronomical auto taxes, cost him more than I make in three years. "The government is basically very paternalistic," he says. "Like your government and J. Edgar Hoover in the 1950s." He doesn't seem to mind. Business is good. We drive on. Indeed, Singapore is like the U.S. of four decades ago. It's like flying into a kind of twisted central-planning father-knows-best time warp. Lining the streets next to such quintessentially American stores as Reebok, Esprit and Timberland are government agencies like the Board of Film Censors and buildings housing the "Social Development Unit" government-run dating service and the "Home Ownership for the People Scheme." Yet Singapore is aggressively marketing itself as an information city of the future. Data will flow through its cyber-byways and as an online hub the nation will prosper as it did as a 19th century trading center. At least that's the plan. Singapore's commitment to free trade is long-standing. Settled by the British in 1819, the 585-square kilometer island quickly became Fortress Singapore, the empire's key southeast Asia trading post. After WWII and independence from the crown came Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, a censor-happy kind of politico whose accomplishments include a ban on jukeboxes. Lee Kuan Yew believes that this tiny island-nation prospers best under a blend of economic freedom and strict social controls. Political liberty is to be shoved aside in favor of strengthening economic muscle. As Ian Buruma writes in a recent issue of TIME Asia, now that Asians are in power themselves, they endorse the essentially colonial idea that Asian people are not yet ready for freedom. The public must become better educated, or wealthier, or more disciplined, or more virtuous. The point is that for an authoritarian government, people are never ready for freedom, not just yet. The traffic light turns yellow. We screech to a stop. Marvin glances at me. "Here we slow down for a yellow light," he explains. All is proper. Order is king. That's why criticizing Singapore is almost too easy. Chaos is verboten. Chewing gum sales are prohibited. Sell drugs, you face the gallows. Canings are routine. Playboy, Penthouse and Cosmo all are banned. (The offending article in Cosmo was the one giving women tips on how to commit adultery and not get caught.) Even a recent episode of "Friends" was censored. This summer, of course, the Singapore Broadcasting Authority (SBA) decided to regulate the Net. Now Internet traffic crossing the border must flow through filters blocking sites that may cause impure thoughts. But still. . . People live here. What do they think of this? In the five days I've spent here so far, at cafes on the Boat-quay, in government offices lining Orchard Road and over Indonesian oxtail soup, I've learned that netizens in Singapore are slightly embarrassed. They don't particularly care for the SBA's regs, yet they defend them with the lackluster effort that Americans might reserve for justifying the wackier actions of the U.S. Congress. "Americans distrust the government," the locals say. "Singaporeans don't. You know they'll do it right. The government has a track record of success." Small surprise; nobody likes to hear outsiders criticizing their culture. What's more, goes the argument, the SBA has only extended existing rules to the Net. "How can we argue for Net freedom without attacking the existing laws?" one lawyer asks me. Marvin suggests an answer: you can't. "Outwardly, Singaporeans may look like any western people. But by culture, by value, they're still Asian," he says. "Do we look repressed here?" a group of soc.culture.singapore denizens asks me. Marvin has driven me to one of the cyber-cafes overlooking the waterfront. I rest my $4 lime juice on one of the Sun Sparcstation 4s tied into a T-1. "No," I say. Perhaps it's that wealth, the economic riches so evident in the glittering glass-and-steel office towers, that permits Singapore cyberians to tolerate broad restrictions on online speech. Or perhaps it's the fact that the nation has no First Amendment tradition -- its constitution includes explicit provisions for government censorship. Besides, the restrictions arguably aren't overly burdensome. Only about 100 overseas sites are blocked by the proxy filters, and circumventing these automated border police is a snap. [...]