Singapore’s security has been one of the main factors why our citizens remain to trust the government, especially when they increase the surveillance, there were no questions asked. We feel safe to roam around the city and neighborhood in the middle of the night because we always have the impression that Singapore is safe, which is undeniable.
The reason why we would rather trust the government to put surveillance on us is because we do not trust each other. William G Staples, Professor of Sociology, mentioned in his book “Everyday Surveillance” that, “In turn, we are left cynically distrusting each other and further disintegrating of public life and discourse.” What we are benefiting from living in a surveillance state are one using it as a coping mechanism of easing one’s paranoia and fear.
We compensate our distrust among people with technologies and evidences traced by digital imprints and believe that it is justice and right. But all of this adds to the consequences of stripping away our privacy.
In the form of not having privacy, closed-circuit television (CCTV) is not the only form of surveillance, but one of them. Even the government are increasing the amount of CCTVs in Singapore as an effort of deterring the terror attacks as Straits Times mentioned in one of their article. Well for the sake of national security, it is inevitable for this to happen, but at the expense of our privacy.
Many would say that security beats privacy, without a doubt. But it will become an issue when we are not given the opportunity to know how was the information was used and what information does the government have about us. This could result to the government having control and power over the citizens and suffer the consequence similar to the panopticon.
The concept of the Panopticon was first introduced by Jeremy Bentham and discussed by Michel Foucault, a french philosopher, who mentioned in his book that, “Panopticism is one of the characteristic traits of our society. It is a type of power that is applied to individuals in the form of continuous individual supervision.”
This form of power is used to subconsciously to induce fear and paranoia so that citizens will lawfully obey them. While it may seem like the right thing to do to reduce crime, it did not create a healthy balance of trust among citizens to citizens and citizens to government.
With all the technological advancement and internet, it is impossible to have privacy at all.
Digital database keeps tracks of each and every site we visited, ez-link card keeps track of our transportation movement, and cars are installed with GPS system. We have taken convenience for granted, and now we take our privacy for granted, but just how much of the information about us are exposed?
Most importantly, I believe we should have a say and know how our data are used. And knowing is there any other purposes for surveillance other then security purposes?
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