Internet censorship in Singapore...?

pstanley · Post by **pstanley** » Mon, 08 Jan 2007 7:12 pm

Hi all,

Could anyone help me with this question. Is there any internet censorship in Singapore now? If so what is being censored? ... political views? news? "pornography"? entire websites? certain port numbers over TCP/IP? ... and if so how is the government controlling this?

I currently work as a software developer in London and am interested in moving to Singapore within the next year or two and would be very interested about the media (especially internet) censorship of Singapore.

Any info or pointers would be more than welcome.

Thanks!

Paul.

Post by **jpatokal** » Mon, 08 Jan 2007 9:38 pm

The easy answer:
http://www.opennetinitiative.net/studies/singapore/ (Internet censorship)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Singapore (overall)

Singapore operates a rather interesting censorship system, which boils down to being able to read whatever you like, as long as you don't try to make waves by publishing it. A few token net sites (eg. playboy.com) are censored, just to show you that they can, but underageanalgoatse.cx or whatever are free to access. Singaporean bookstores are neutered, but nobody cares what you order from Amazon.com. The local newspapers & TV are all controlled by the government and hence parrot its line faithfully, but the blogosphere regularly rips its articles to shreds -- although there, too, the government slaps people who get too far out of line (racial/religious encitement, allegations of govn't corruption, etc).

Post by **sundaymorningstaple** » Mon, 08 Jan 2007 9:59 pm

This taken from the MDA website FAQ's:

Is accessing pornography on the Internet illegal?

The MDA does not monitor or track users' access to any sites on the Internet and does not interfere with what individuals access in the privacy of their homes. We are primarily concerned with the purveyors and distributors of pornography. Unless you engage in such activities, the mere act of visiting such sites is not an offence.

http://www.mda.gov.sg/wms.www/devnpolicies.aspx?sid=161

http://www.mda.gov.sg/wms.file/mobj/mob ... &myths.pdf

I have been told that it's about 100 site url's that are blocked but it is occasionally updated as purveyors of filth usually change their url's to get around this. It's more a case of "we are letting you know that we can" type of thing. I know of over a dozen sites that are blocked that aren't even listed in the link on internet filtering in JP's post.

(just chanced upon them because of pop-ups!

)

Plavt · Post by **Plavt** » Mon, 08 Jan 2007 11:58 pm

sundaymorningstaple wrote: (just chanced upon them because of pop-ups! )

Firefox comes in useful.

NoBob · Post by **NoBob** » Wed, 10 Jan 2007 5:27 am

How about torrents?

NoBob.

Post by **sundaymorningstaple** » Wed, 10 Jan 2007 9:19 am

NoBob wrote:How about torrents?

NoBob.

There have been a few people here charged with illegal downloading of MP3's etc. (intellectual property copyright violations).

http://www.managingip.com/?ISS=17997&PU ... SearchStr=

download at your own peril.

Splatted · Post by **Splatted** » Wed, 10 Jan 2007 11:10 am

starhub do block some porn sites ..... so, I'm told, of course ...

Splatted · Post by **Splatted** » Wed, 10 Jan 2007 11:17 am

regarding torrents, it is now possible for the goverment to monitor exactly the sort of content you are downloading and it's nature.

I think the chinese government have adopted this software, (which I think is called 'narus' from memory,.. or that might be the software developers name?) so they can monitor skype and other voip calls.

edit: Narus is the name of the company

NoBob · Post by **NoBob** » Wed, 10 Jan 2007 7:36 pm

Hi,

About the link sundaymorningstaple, I get an "SQL Server does not exist or access denied" message.

> "regarding torrents, it is now possible for the goverment to monitor exactly the sort of content you are downloading and it's nature." Has it been reported that it uses this software?

NoBob.

Splatted · Post by **Splatted** » Thu, 11 Jan 2007 1:44 am

NoBob wrote:Has it been reported that it uses this software?

NoBob.

no, I have not read anything about Singapore government using it. Having said that, there is no question in my mind as to whether they have it or use it - given the perceived terrorism threat to Singapore, I'm confident all voip calls are not private.

you can read a bit about the different packages here:
http://www.narus.com/products/index.html

NoBob · Post by **NoBob** » Thu, 11 Jan 2007 2:16 am

Thanks.

NoBob.

Post by **jpatokal** » Fri, 12 Jan 2007 1:32 am

Splatted wrote:regarding torrents, it is now possible for the goverment to monitor exactly the sort of content you are downloading and it's nature.

Not really. All traffic through Singapore is proxied, so they can see what sites you're accessing and what you're entering -- but torrents are highly fragmentary distributed streams of all sorts of random content, and basically impossible to casually keep track of.

Splatted · Post by **Splatted** » Fri, 12 Jan 2007 9:16 am

jpatokal wrote: Not really. All traffic through Singapore is proxied, so they can see what sites you're accessing and what you're entering -- but torrents are highly fragmentary distributed streams of all sorts of random content, and basically impossible to casually keep track of.

Not true anymore jpatokal - have a read through that website I listed above. They can analyse the packets & easily determine it's a peer-to-peer transfer, including the ability to block those streams.

Post by **sundaymorningstaple** » Fri, 12 Jan 2007 1:40 pm

NoBob wrote:Hi,

About the link sundaymorningstaple, I get an "SQL Server does not exist or access denied" message.

> "regarding torrents, it is now possible for the goverment to monitor exactly the sort of content you are downloading and it's nature." Has it been reported that it uses this software?

NoBob.

Are you trying to access from behind a firewall? I just tried the link and it works fine.

sms

pstanley · Post by **pstanley** » Fri, 12 Jan 2007 7:07 pm

Splatted wrote:regarding torrents, it is now possible for the goverment to monitor exactly the sort of content you are downloading and it's nature.

I think the chinese government have adopted this software, (which I think is called 'narus' from memory,.. or that might be the software developers name?) so they can monitor skype and other voip calls.

edit: Narus is the name of the company

"regarding torrents, it is now possible for the goverment to monitor exactly the sort of content you are downloading and it's nature."

I find this extremely unlikely as monitoring data downloaded from torrents is much more complicated than from a server to client in a constant stream - like a website.

monitoring voip and skype......yeah probably

but if they are doing that they are probably already "listening" to most telephone conversations

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Internet censorship in Singapore...?

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