Death in Singapore • Hacker News Board

Re: Death in Singapore

#101

Post by TazeTSchnitzel » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 11:44 AM UTC

contingencies wrote: post #93

wilfra wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While these aren't good, they don't refute the commonly held belief that Singapore is essentially free from corruption. Human rights is another issue and on this they do very badly. They are among the worst places in the World to get arrested for basically anything and they have harsh laws that restrict all sorts of personal freedoms. But that's not corruption.

It's only free from corruption on the indices because financial crime is legalized (the victims are overseas in places like Burma, where their clients extract ill-gotten gains to launder in the Singapore markets) and the government, which came to power on a platform of communism and claims to be a democracy, is in fact a well established, dynastically-held totalitarian state with hopelessly enslaved (believe they are…

That would explain why the same party has won every single election since independence.

Re: Death in Singapore

#102

Post by ginger_beer » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 11:48 AM UTC

steve-howard wrote: post #82

varunkho wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

It's possible that his laptop, with the external hard drive, was accessed remotely, and that the "speaker" was simply removed by the police when they took the laptop. If it was on a corporate network (as it would be if he used it to back up data) then they might well have been exposed to some form of corporate spyware. Of course, we can't know with the computer under wraps.

Does anybody else wonder how an external hard drive could be mistaken as a speaker ? Seems quite improbable to me that police would remove the laptop but not the external hard drive attached to it. Also, once the owner died, how could the laptop continued to make backup of the files inside, enough for them to know that there was an 'attacker' who accessed those files? This suggests that there's some form of automatic backup script running in the background AND the laptop had been turned on throughout AND connected to the external hard drive. Up to the moment of 'recovery' by the police, who stupidly failed to notice this ?

Whenever we watch Holywood hacking movies, we couldn't help but notice the hilarious 'techie' scene. However, there shouldn't be such consistencies in this article because this is supposed to be based on reality.

Re: Death in Singapore

#103

Post by gph » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 11:49 AM UTC

contingencies wrote: post #92

Matti wrote: post #81

Not the first death of that kind in Singapore: "Family suspects interference in David Widjaja case" http://sgforums.com/forums/3317/topics/363855 "However, it appeared the court process was intentionally directed to a conclusion of suicide despite evidence showing a strong possibility of murder, according to David's family and the verification team. "We have strong evidence that he was murdered but that fact was not…

Absolutely chilling. What are the odds of being hit by a car in Singapore? One would think that, given so few people have them and that there are so few roads large enough to speed down, with the culture being so conservative, drugs near-absent and surveillance omnipresent, that it would be rare indeed; further, it would be trivial to catch the perpetrator. Were they caught in this case? Not, I suppose. It feels as i…

Let's see what the statistics have to say, first for Singapore:

"Total pedestrian fatalities dropped from 49 in 2011 to 44 in 2012" [1] Singapores' population is ~5 million[wikipedia], so the odds of being killed by a car for the total population is ~0.00088%

For a comparison let's look at NYC, which has roughly double the population within City Limits (~8 million for NYC):

"From 2002 to 2006, 843 pedestrians were killed"[2] That's ~211 deaths per year. Making the percentage odds ~0.0026375%

So you're about 1/3 as likely to be hit and killed by a car in Singapore than NYC. That's fairly significant, but there are a couple things to point out. NYC does have a significantly higher population density and I would assume it has a higher amount of vehicle traffic.

I think overall while it's clearly less likely to be killed as a pedestrian in Singapore, I wouldn't exactly call it "rare". And while I'm no professional on Singapore, I don't know why you characterize Singapore as somewhere that doesn't have large roads or many vehicles (There are 965,192 vehicles in Singapore[1]). Also I don't think CCTV is nearly as ubiquitous as you think, from the few news articles I've read they probably only have a few thousand with more only starting to roll-out recently[3][4]. It's certainly not up to London standards, and I doubt even there ever single pedestrian death is caught by CCTV.

[1]http://driving-in-singapore.spf.gov.sg/services/driving_in_s...

[2]http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nyc_ped_safety_stu...

[3]http://www.safetrolley.com/latest-news/singapore-police-inst...

[4]http://www.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne+News/Singapore/Story/A1S...

Re: Death in Singapore

#104

Post by ginger_beer » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 11:51 AM UTC

contingencies wrote: post #92

Matti wrote: post #81

Not the first death of that kind in Singapore: "Family suspects interference in David Widjaja case" http://sgforums.com/forums/3317/topics/363855 "However, it appeared the court process was intentionally directed to a conclusion of suicide despite evidence showing a strong possibility of murder, according to David's family and the verification team. "We have strong evidence that he was murdered but that fact was not…

Absolutely chilling. What are the odds of being hit by a car in Singapore? One would think that, given so few people have them and that there are so few roads large enough to speed down, with the culture being so conservative, drugs near-absent and surveillance omnipresent, that it would be rare indeed; further, it would be trivial to catch the perpetrator. Were they caught in this case? Not, I suppose. It feels as i…

Sorry but this is rather ignorant. Enough people have cars and the roads are definitely wide enough, just like anywhere else, for traffic accidents to occur regularly. Surveillance might be omnipresent, but it's not a CCTV state like the UK.

Re: Death in Singapore

#105

Post by wilfra » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 11:54 AM UTC

contingencies wrote: post #93

wilfra wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While these aren't good, they don't refute the commonly held belief that Singapore is essentially free from corruption. Human rights is another issue and on this they do very badly. They are among the worst places in the World to get arrested for basically anything and they have harsh laws that restrict all sorts of personal freedoms. But that's not corruption.

It's only free from corruption on the indices because financial crime is legalized (the victims are overseas in places like Burma, where their clients extract ill-gotten gains to launder in the Singapore markets) and the government, which came to power on a platform of communism and claims to be a democracy, is in fact a well established, dynastically-held totalitarian state with hopelessly enslaved (believe they are…

Can you give some examples of legal financial crimes? Not saying you're wrong, I've just never heard that. I know they are a tax haven and have lax financial controls, but the "victims" of that are the tax man in foreign governments.

Re: Death in Singapore

#106

Post by ck2 » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 11:54 AM UTC

Huawei has been deemed a security risk by powerful US lawmakers

Shane had deep misgivings about the project he was working on and feared he was compromising US national security

The fact he didn't walk away in the first moment he felt this way, most likely means one of the US agencies killed him. We are apparently already allowed to kill citizens without trial when they are not on US soil.

Well written article though and the presentation was helpful.

Re: Death in Singapore

#107

Post by seabee » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 11:54 AM UTC

ginger_beer wrote: post #104

contingencies wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely chilling. What are the odds of being hit by a car in Singapore? One would think that, given so few people have them and that there are so few roads large enough to speed down, with the culture being so conservative, drugs near-absent and surveillance omnipresent, that it would be rare indeed; further, it would be trivial to catch the perpetrator. Were they caught in this case? Not, I suppose. It feels as i…

Sorry but this is rather ignorant. Enough people have cars and the roads are definitely wide enough, just like anywhere else, for traffic accidents to occur regularly. Surveillance might be omnipresent, but it's not a CCTV state like the UK.

s/UK/London

Re: Death in Singapore

#108

Post by wilfra » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 12:01 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #97

wilfra wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the men in power decided the death needs to be covered up, that is exactly evidence of corruption - it's just high-level corruption and not low-level. Mexico is an example of a country with a lot of low-level corruption (you can bribe the police to get out of anything). The United States is an example of a country with very little low-level corruption, but with (arguably) lots of high-level corruption. Singapore i…

> If the men in power decided the death needs to be covered up, that is exactly evidence of corruption - it's just high-level corruption and not low-level. Not if the high-level law permits this kind of thing.

Are you suggesting its legal for corporate intersts to kill people in Singapore (or anywhere)? Think we'll need a citation for that...

Re: Death in Singapore

#109

Post by 2muchcoffeeman » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 12:01 PM UTC

agilord wrote: post #22

homosaur wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, then what exactly would you call it? You are essentially subject to all manner of ridiculous punishment for what would be considered minor or non-offenses in most free countries. Most of their elections are uncontested. You can dress it up because their streets are clean and safe, but it's still facism.

I've visited Singapore just for a few days, but based on that experiment, the western media is overdoing this Singapore-bashing. I'd strongly suggest to visit the country, or at least get familiar with its history, its surrounding neighbors, theirs relationships, theirs relative cultural and economical differences. After that you will understand them better, and you will realize that its not that black-and-white as t…

I grew up in Singapore. I was there for almost 17 years. I'm in Sydney now.

Parent is right, a lot of the negative media attention is completely over blown. Things like "outdoor gatherings of five or more persons still require police permits" while I think is still technically true, is never enforced. Obviously, because then you would require a gathering permit for a small family and the police would be running around every day busting school children.

Some of the laws are strict, but you'll see people breaking minor laws everyday with no repercussions. Just like every other city, the police have to use their brains to determine how best to spend their time.

They definitely take some offenses very very seriously e.g drug trafficing and possession. And some things seem a bit crazy like banning chewing gum. But I was there when this law came into effect and the difference it made to the city's cleanliness was noticeable.

There are other good things too. Its quite modern. Smoking is banned almost everywhere. It's really safe. Even for women at night. Public transport is good. It's multicultural and you get all the major religious holidays even if they are not your own.

It's actually a pretty good place to live.

Re: Death in Singapore

#110

Post by kevin_p » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 12:02 PM UTC

ginger_beer wrote: post #102

steve-howard wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible that his laptop, with the external hard drive, was accessed remotely, and that the "speaker" was simply removed by the police when they took the laptop. If it was on a corporate network (as it would be if he used it to back up data) then they might well have been exposed to some form of corporate spyware. Of course, we can't know with the computer under wraps.

Does anybody else wonder how an external hard drive could be mistaken as a speaker ? Seems quite improbable to me that police would remove the laptop but not the external hard drive attached to it. Also, once the owner died, how could the laptop continued to make backup of the files inside, enough for them to know that there was an 'attacker' who accessed those files? This suggests that there's some form of automatic…

There's a picture in the article - it's in a dock, almost vertical but leaning back at a slight angle, which makes it look a bit like a speaker. Direct link to the image: http://im.ft-static.com/content/images/bb2e144a-7653-11e2-8e...