Singapore Sling -- A second look, from The Netly News

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

---------- 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.

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