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Death in Singapore

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Re: Death in Singapore

#171

Post by contingencies »

wilfra wrote: post #105
contingencies wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am talking about, for example, laundering money for the Burmese junta, who routinely censor, enslave, imprison, rape and kill their own citizens.

eg. "In 1991, the Junta laundered $400 million through a Singapore bank as down payment for Chinese weapons." - Jane's Intelligence Review ... or see http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2007/09/singapores-debt-of-h...

Re: Death in Singapore

#172

Post by contingencies »

gph wrote: post #103
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…

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 ki…

I don't see how NY is relevant at all. Perhaps this is relevant, though:

"With a population of 5 million, Singapore has one of the world's highest per capita execution rates. While official figures are not produced, according to Amnesty International there have been at least 400 executions over the past two decades." - The Guardian, 2010-11-16, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/...

Re: Death in Singapore

#173

Post by aeze »

nshepperd wrote: post #21

> The Todds agree that Shane’s hard drive may be a critical piece of evidence in how he died and could shed fresh light on the vulnerabilities of technology safeguards. But they question how the Singapore police have so far investigated Shane’s death, so they won’t hand over the drive. They are offering, instead, to send a copy of the contents of the drive. Good. This is pretty much the only sane way to handle digita…

Until you realize they're sending a logical copy with no hash of the original.

Re: Death in Singapore

#174

Post by flexie »

lgieron wrote: post #152
flexie wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I think everyone agrees that dictatorship is superior to democracy IF the dictator is (and remains in the future) competent and also a decent human being. Maybe that's the state in Singapore right now?

I don't agree. I'd rather have the - sometimes - incompetent, corrupt and selfish democratically elected politicians of the US or Europe, than the 'benevolent dictator' (even if he existed). I really like the idea of democracy that much.

It's not that I don't see your point. Often democracies are inefficient. I just still prefer democracy.

Re: Death in Singapore

#175

Post by njloof »

nshepperd wrote: post #21

> The Todds agree that Shane’s hard drive may be a critical piece of evidence in how he died and could shed fresh light on the vulnerabilities of technology safeguards. But they question how the Singapore police have so far investigated Shane’s death, so they won’t hand over the drive. They are offering, instead, to send a copy of the contents of the drive. Good. This is pretty much the only sane way to handle digita…

Shane had no place taking home a copy of his work computer. Didn't deserve what happened, but that was just foolish... unless he was an informant.

Re: Death in Singapore

#176

Post by brown9-2 »

disbelief wrote: post #149
miked wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Sounds like a classic case of corporate murder. No, it sounds like a case of Chinese government murder, something they have plenty of experience with. They must have known that there was a good chance that he would talk to the US government. The more interesting aspect is that the IME, a agency of the Singaporean government, would appear to be in on at least the suppression of the story.

Just wondering who had more at stake here: the Chinese Gov't or the US Gov't? If he was the one guy with the skills and knowledge (at IME) capable of operating this device, and his work was a potential national security threat to the US, then wouldn't they have more motive to kill him than China? I don't think it would have come as much of a surprise to the US that China is interested in cutting-edge semiconductor te…

Considering his "suicide" happened on the last day of work at IME and he was coming home to the US, it would seem the cat was out of the bag on that one.

Re: Death in Singapore

#177

Post by brown9-2 »

miked wrote: post #77
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…

>> Sounds like a classic case of corporate murder. No, it sounds like a case of Chinese government murder, something they have plenty of experience with. They must have known that there was a good chance that he would talk to the US government. The more interesting aspect is that the IME, a agency of the Singaporean government, would appear to be in on at least the suppression of the story.

If IME has a lucrative partnership with Huawei, then there might be incentive to keep it alive.

Re: Death in Singapore

#178

Post by brown9-2 »

ck2 wrote: post #106

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…

What is to be gained from killing an IME employee on the last day of his employment with IME?

Re: Death in Singapore

#180

Post by Xofel »

contingencies wrote: post #168
arbus wrote: post #122

I'm a Singaporean and have served for some time in the military( Compulsory National Service as well as a short stint as a regular) and I think that the comments below seem to misunderstand the level of control that the government has over speech, people and companies in Singapore. We have many restrictive laws here but they are very selectively enforced. As long as you stay away from "hot" topics such as direct crit…

Singaporeans: "We have high quality of life!" "We have relative freedom of speech!" "We are modern!" Rest of world: Singaporeans pay top dollar for tiny apartments, have no nature, no drugs (and thus little art), no real political freedom, are forced to military service (read: military brain washing on top of the social/education system serving) and self-censor routinely whilst claiming their government is really OK!…

Pains me to agree, but spot on.
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