Conduct Unbecoming

There are many posts on the closed doors meeting pertaining to the impending crackdown on the Singapore internet. It was conducted according to the Chaltham House Rule, which stipulates that nothing should be done to identify, either explicitly or implicitly, who said what. The government representatives obviously were not looking forward to being named in public, like the infamous 48 listed, in case they said something stupid. After all, their wife and children may suffer from the unwarranted glare of the media.

One said representative explained that in the light of recent reports of hoaxes, falsehoods and racist comments that have spread online, there is a need for a code of conduct to serve as an alternative mechanism for people to seek redress. Otherwise, they will resort to calling the police.

Let's deal with the last line first. A netizen made a police report about Sun Xu's “I will wait for him with a knife” threat of bodily harm. The police first said a magistrate's complaint was required, then said it had decided to take no further action “after careful consideration of the facts and circumstances of the case and in consultation with the Attorney-General’s Chambers.” The combined civic action of the bloggers was more effective in the take down of the PRC scholar ingrate.

Racist comments there are aplenty, but none beats the failure to integrate over a meal accusation levied at our Muslim brothers. But unlike the two young men who were jailed under the Sedition Act, this one culprit was let off with a "I stand corrected" cop out. By any first world standard, this is conduct unbecoming.

We are not told what hoaxes and falsehoods the government representative alluded to. For all we know, the police warnings about spreading "false information about unverified cases of kidnapping" could have been a plant, a precursor to the excuse for a clampdown on cyberspace. What we do know is that hoaxes and falsehoods continue to be propagated and sponsored by the mainstream media. As are the lies that housing, transportation, healthcare, education are "subsidised". The truth that social media has maintained all along is that these tariffs are but a discount from the market rates, an adaptation of the pricing model used by TT Durai's NKF. Tan Chuan-Jin may blog until he's blue in the face, but a $100,000 flat is not affordable to someone drawing $1,000 a month, even before inflation hit 5.2%. And then there's the guy who said foreigners are workers transient workers who go home after the infrastructure is built. Just to make sure we are on the same page,
falsehood [ˈfɔːlsˌhʊd], noun, is
1. the quality of being untrue
2. an untrue statement; lie
3. the act of deceiving or lying

That's the definition from the internet version of The Collins English Dictionary.