IP: In Singapore, Little Brother is Watching!

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 22:37:01 +0800
> To: farber () cis upenn edu
> From: mengwong () pobox com (mengwong () pobox com)
>
>  >From http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/spore/nplo08.html
>
>    The next time you go shopping in Orchard Road, beware.
>
>    Someone armed with a camera may be taking snapshots of
>    you when you least expect it and posting them on the
>    Internet, running your face with some humorous,
>    provocative or naughty captions.
>
>    These "Candid Cameramen" have set up a site called
>    JCGirls (http://jcgirls.cjb.net) on the Internet.
>
>    The site features pictures of young and pretty girls
>    taken at popular shopping malls along Orchard Road, like
>    Ngee Ann City, Orchard Cineleisure and The Heeren.
>
> My comments:
>
> In his novel "Earth," David Brin argues for a
> "panopticon-of-the-people": in his future, everyone records,
> everyone publishes.  Privacy in a public place is made
> impossible: but not by the spying state, or by the prying
> press, but by ordinary individuals who consider their
> cam-feeds just another aspect of daily life.
>
> Today, the West regularly criticizes Singapore for its "Big
> Brother" government.  Citizens routinely submit to --- and
> cooperate with! --- what American observers would consider
> shocking trespasses by the state upon personal privacy.
> Efficiency, security, necessity ... and people go along.
>
> And Singaporeans sometimes pity the West for its overfree
> press.  Journalists wielding the public's "right to know"
> routinely barge in on the private lives of private citizens.
> When I was a photojournalist I was taught that the paper
> could publish any picture taken in a public place, subject
> to the usual considerations of accuracy, libel, and
> misrepresentation.  That's what it means, after all, to be
> in a public place: people can see you.  My camera has
> ruffled its share of feathers.
>
> It's interesting, therefore, that the first signs of David
> Brin's transparent society have arisen not in the United
> States but in Singapore.
>
> Trespasses upon personal privacy by the press are nothing
> new.  By the state, neither.  In both cases something
> private has entered a kind of "public" domain.
>
> But for my privacy to be meaningfully eroded by another
> private individual not associated with the state or the
> press: that's something that simply wasn't possible
> ... until the web came along.
>
> I wonder what will happen.
>
> today's newspaper story: http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/spore/nplo08.html
> books by brin: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/055329024X/
>              http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/020132802X/
> about the panopticon: 
> http://www.rochester.edu/College/FS/Publications/Lyon.html
> essay by joshua gamson: http://epn.org/prospect/41/41gamso.html