civil liberties? what civil liberties?

Hundreds more cameras on streets to bolster security
By Goh Chin Lian
The Straits Times
May 22 2006

HUNDREDS of new electronic eyes will be watching the streets of Singapore, under three new police and transport authority projects to be completed by next year.

The Land Transport Authority will install closed circuit TV (CCTV) cameras to monitor 67 traffic junctions and the Singapore Police Force will put up another 91 in the Raffles City area, where the International Monetary Fund and World Bank conferences will be held in September.

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Whenever you're ready, i'll be waiting for you to shove that CCTV camera up my ass so you can monitor the 'terrorist cells' growing up there.

As if Singaporeans aren't monitored enough already, this new move can only add to the climate of fear that's already so pervasive as well as further threaten anyone who's even thinking about making any kind of public statement at the IMF/World Bank meetings.

And this paragraph in the article just made me wanna scream:
"Buses and trains here could be next to have electronic eyes, going by the experience of several major cities like London, where the network of 500,000 cameras helped track down perpetrators of the terror attacks."

Helluuu...you mean the cameras that made London police chase a suspect down London's streets just cos he was wearing a backpack and was brown, which apparently was close enough to what they saw on their highly fuzzy and blurred cameras on buses and which ended up leading to the STATE-SANCTIONED KILLING OF AN INNOCENT MAN IN BROAD DAYLIGHT? Those cameras?

The good news: This story was front page news today in Singapore's widest circulating English newspaper.

The bad news: There probably won't be so much as a peep of protest about this new development in repressive culture, except maybe on a few other blogs. C'mon, my fellow countrypeople, surprise me.