Singapore's Fake News Law Is Also An Internet Surveillance Law
from the hidden-bonus-track dept
It appears the fake news law passed in Singapore isn’t just a critic-targeting, speech-chilling piece of legislation passed under the cover of providing citizens with a more trustworthy social media experience. It’s also a handy vehicle for increased domestic surveillance, as Jennifer Daskal reports for the New York Times.
The law could be used to require any company that operates as an “internet intermediary” — including search engines, social media companies, and messaging services — to keep records of what users view. But it doesn’t stop there. While it’s unclear how the new law will be enforced, it even appears to leave room for the government to require encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp or iMessage to identify who said what to whom.
What this has to do with policing “fake news” is anyone’s guess. But “fake news” laws are never really about tracking down and removing fake news. They’re about controlling what people see online and providing a handy kill switch for anything governments don’t want to see passed around the internet.
The law allows the government to demand removal of content that undermines the government’s official narratives. This isn’t a loophole or an unexpected side effect. It’s the point of the law. Any minister can issue a content removal demand if they see something they feel “undermines democratic processes or society.”
Removal demands are supposed to be the last resort. The first response to alleged fake news is the issuance of a correction notice — again, as demanded by the Singaporean government. This is far less draconian than demanding removal of content, but this response method has its own set of problems. The law requires more than the appending of a correction to alleged fake news. It also requires tech companies to ensure everyone who viewed the alleged fake news is informed of the correction. This will result in the creation and maintenance of web tracking infrastructure solely for the benefit of the government.
Correction notices effectively require websites to track those who post, look at and might be influenced by or attracted to a “false” statement. They can be ordered to identify all those who looked at the infringing material even before it was labeled troubling. They must then send out correction notices to these prior viewers, or risk hefty fines and even jail time.
Once companies are retaining records on all Singaporean users to comply with the fake news law, they won’t be able to credibly claim they don’t have these records if the government starts demanding them for other reasons. It will sweep in more than just new sources and social media sites. It will also cover anywhere else “fake news” might be posted, which includes comment threads and review sites.
Intentionally or not, the Singapore government has used fake news to create an internet surveillance program. The best part is it won’t cost the government a cent to run it. It will be performed free-of-charge by tech companies who will still be on the hook for fines if the government decides they’re not fighting fake news well enough.
Filed Under: fake news, internet, privacy, singapore, surveillance
Comments on “Singapore's Fake News Law Is Also An Internet Surveillance Law”
Fake Out
In the States, "Fake News" means anything critical of the president. Why should it be any different in Singapore? The sitting president just called for a boycott of companies critical to his shenanigans.
Some of that smells awfully familiar. It’s almost as if Singapore has taken a page straight out of the playbook of the American Tech giants.
Re: Re:
"It’s almost as if Singapore has taken a page straight out of the playbook of the American political parties, and most recently specifically the sitting President."
Fixed that for you.
And all every government is interested in is ensuring that what it and ite mega rich friends and backers can do whatever they want eithout veing found out or questioned but us ordinary people cant do a fucking thing without being tracked, and ultimately penalised! The age of global dictatorship is here and we wont be able to do a thing about it because all governments will be/are colluding with each other to ensure that those who oppose disappear. Remind you of any country’s leaders views from the past??
The inform prior viewers requirement also eliminates anonymous use of the Internet so that viewers can be notified..
Doesn’t giving ministers the power to remove speech on demand undermine democratic processes, by definition?
Re: Re:
It all depends on whose definition of "democratic" we’re talking about. Countries that openly self-identify as democratic, such as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the German Democratic Republic, tend to have an entirely different definition of the word. And the police state known as Singapore is not far off from that lot.
Re: Questioning the government is questioning democracy itself
Not at all. As members of a democratically elected government obviously they know best what real democracy looks like, and further as members of a democratically elected government it should be clear that anything that might make them look bad and/or question their power/authority is a dire threat to democracy itself and must be stamped out.
The results of the democratic process is indistinguishable from the democratic process after all, such that undermining the latter is no different than undermining the former.
news summaries
I get most of my "news" reading through a summary page, just seeing the headlines and the sentence or so of intro text. I rarely click through to the full article. Will sites need to track which headlines they showed me? If I don’t sign in to the conglomeration service, how would they ever know how to contact me, lurking on the other side of my VPN?
On the other hand, this is going to generate some very interesting "transparency" pages where some entity, outside of the control of the censorial country, collects the records of which articles have been targeted and provides fact-checking rebuttals.