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Death in Singapore

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Re: Death in Singapore

#61

Post by amvp »

homosaur wrote: post #47
jasonlingx wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the difference between the west and the east. It is a chasm in philosophy that will never be bridged. The US kills its own citizens without trial using hellfire missiles in drone strikes. So what's the difference?

If you're looking for me to defend the U.S., you're going to be looking for a very, very, very long time. I'm as anti-drone, anti-police state as you will ever find a US citizen. BUUUUUT, I will bite on one thing. How many Americans have been killed by drones? A handful? How many of those were actively fighting for terrorist organizations? All of them. Now I do think it's only a matter of time before the US turns tha…

> How many Americans have been killed by drones? A handful? How many of those were actively fighting for terrorist organizations? All of them.

(American born) Anwar al-Awlaki's 16-year old son was killed in a separate drone strike, 2 weeks after his father was killed. No suggestion was made that the son was guilty of anything, but that 'he should have had a more responsible father'.

Re: Death in Singapore

#62

Post by homosaur »

VexXtreme wrote: post #39

Sounds like a classic case of corporate murder. In the cozy world of web startups, we engineers have an incredible amount of freedom and control over our lives and what we do... but megacorps and companies connected to the defense/war industry are known for treating their engineers as fungible resources that can easily be disposed of once they get the job done. Sounds like something out of a hi-tech Tom Clancy spy no…

Western educated engineers are a dime a dozen in Asia for companies with large bank. White folks probably have a very confused view on this when they head out to Asia for work.

Re: Death in Singapore

#63

Post by PeterisP »

aerique wrote: post #13
batgaijin wrote: post #3

Wow... that is beyond weird. From what I've read I always thought Singapore was quite the corrupt-free police state.

I do not think it possible to have a corrupt-free police state.

Not trying to invoke Godwin's law, but AFAIK both Stalin and Hitler had police states with rather little corruption; certainly far less corruption than nowadays Russia or mid-Africa.

Re: Death in Singapore

#64

Post by JumpCrisscross »

contingencies wrote: post #30

Fellow hackers: stay away from anything connected to the defence industry. Security might be fun, it might pay well, but the ethics are terrible, things get used for bad purposes, and you can easily lose your freedom or worse.

Shane Todd worked for the IME, a globally regarded research organisation based in a country that scored higher in the 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index than the U.S. (87, #5 versus 73, #19) [1]. If he worked for the defence industry then so would an Oracle engineer deployed at Northrup Grumman or a SpaceX engineer in competing with Lockheed Martin.

[1] http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2012/results/

Re: Death in Singapore

#65

Post by homosaur »

rdl wrote: post #31

This is terrifying. Either it's a tragic suicide (which hurts even more given that there have been so many high-profile tech suicides recently), or it's an escalation of low-grade economic/technology/cybersecurity war between the US and China.

Not recently on the suicides, mate, always. The only recent thing is the rockstar status of these folks where it hits the news.

Re: Death in Singapore

#66

Post by flexie »

hboon wrote: post #4
batgaijin wrote: post #3

Wow... that is beyond weird. From what I've read I always thought Singapore was quite the corrupt-free police state.

It isn't a police state. And in recent years, it has been shown that it isn't corruption-free either.

Oh, but Singapore is a police state (a state where the government exercises rigid and oppressive laws).

It is also a dictatorship. It may not be the worst of its kind in that it actually has (the thin conception of the) rule of law, but it's not a free country and it lacks decent human rights.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law_doctrine_in_Singapo...

Re: Death in Singapore

#67

Post by varunkho »

creamyhorror wrote: post #16

This story is all over my FB wall. Rest assured there are many concerned Singaporeans listening, and it'll be harder to ignore this case now that the FT has brought it to the world's attention. I'd like to hear the IME and police's side of the story, though - hopefully a higher body will conduct a proper investigation to settle the facts and determine motives. We rarely get serious cases of cover-ups being exposed, s…

wondering why didn't the person possibly looking/cleaning the evidence from the harddrive take it with him in the first place? Isn't Suspense theory indicating something deeper?

> Hours later, in the middle of the night, someone went into Shane’s hard drive and accessed five folders, all labelled IME. ... Since the time of Shane’s death is uncertain, Massoud could not say who looked at the IME files. > But Massoud found activity, again, on several more IME files on the night of June 27, three days after Shane’s body was found. He said someone looked at IME folders – including one labelled “Supervisor” and one labelled “Goal Setting”

Edit: Usually the actual suspect would want to remove the evidence itself – in this case, the harddrive is carefully tampered with. Still the contained information is enough to put the blaim on a party – or the actual accuser is more profound than it is semed?

Re: Death in Singapore

#68

Post by homosaur »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #64
contingencies wrote: post #30

Fellow hackers: stay away from anything connected to the defence industry. Security might be fun, it might pay well, but the ethics are terrible, things get used for bad purposes, and you can easily lose your freedom or worse.

Shane Todd worked for the IME, a globally regarded research organisation based in a country that scored higher in the 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index than the U.S. (87, #5 versus 73, #19) [1]. If he worked for the defence industry then so would an Oracle engineer deployed at Northrup Grumman or a SpaceX engineer in competing with Lockheed Martin. [1] http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2012/results/

What does corruption have anything to do with this? I would think it's largely irrelevant.

And also, you're right, those people do work in the defense industry.

Re: Death in Singapore

#69

Post by jasonlingx »

homosaur wrote: post #47
jasonlingx wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the difference between the west and the east. It is a chasm in philosophy that will never be bridged. The US kills its own citizens without trial using hellfire missiles in drone strikes. So what's the difference?

If you're looking for me to defend the U.S., you're going to be looking for a very, very, very long time. I'm as anti-drone, anti-police state as you will ever find a US citizen. BUUUUUT, I will bite on one thing. How many Americans have been killed by drones? A handful? How many of those were actively fighting for terrorist organizations? All of them. Now I do think it's only a matter of time before the US turns tha…

> How many Americans have been killed by drones? A handful? How many of those were actively fighting for terrorist organizations? All of them.

How would you know? There were no trials.

Re: Death in Singapore

#70

Post by homosaur »

PeterisP wrote: post #63
aerique wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not think it possible to have a corrupt-free police state.

Not trying to invoke Godwin's law, but AFAIK both Stalin and Hitler had police states with rather little corruption; certainly far less corruption than nowadays Russia or mid-Africa.

But those aren't police states at all, Russia and Central Africa. They are very poorly organized and great parts of the countries are lawless. They may have authoritarian governments but those governments have limited authority to enact things.

And with Stalin/Hitler, you'd also have to look at the neighboring historical eras. For all you know Germany historically was also very non-corrupt. (not a challenge, if you do know, please speak!)

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