"SINGAPORE - In the not too distant future, surveillance cameras sitting atop over 100,000 lampposts in Singapore could help authorities pick out and recognise faces in crowds across the island-state.
The plan to install the cameras, which will be linked to facial recognition software, is raising privacy fears among security experts and rights groups. The government said the system would allow it to "perform crowd analytics" and support anti-terror operations."
"Singapore has trialled patrol robots that blast warnings at people engaging in "undesirable social behaviour", adding to an arsenal of surveillance technology in the tightly controlled city-state that is fuelling privacy concerns."
"In fact the $60bn multinational has just been scooped by Nutonomy, a small MIT spin-out whose electric self-driving cabs have already started picking up real customers in a Singapore business park. Initially, riders will use Nutonomy's own app to summon hail a Mitsubishi i-Miev or a Renault Zoe, ramping up to a dozen vehicles in the coming months."
"The store will also utilise data and video analytics to analyse purchasing behaviour and customise its inventory. An auto-ordering system eliminates the need to manually track and order stocks."
"Dubbed TraceTogether, the app is able to identify people who have been in close proximity - within 2m for at least 30 minutes - to coronavirus patients using wireless Bluetooth technology, said its developers, the Government Technology Agency (GovTech) and the Ministry of Health (MOH), on Friday (March 20)."
"The Singapore government says the wearable device it is developing for COVID-19 contact tracing will not have GPS, internet, or cellular connectivity, so data it collects can only be extracted when it is physically handed over to a health official. These details are being offered up as the government looks to ease concerns about data privacy and drive the adoption of digital tools that can help speed up contact tracing. "
"The Singapore government is to establish a new Data Security Office and implement a number of measures to better safeguard citizen information, following a series of serious government data leaks. "
"That is when the alarm bells went off for Mr Ang. "I saw that there was a text file inside the encrypted folder that showed that it was ransomware, asking for payment to decrypt the files."
The company decided not to pay the ransom of US$1,000 (S$1,447). Instead, it spent a week rebuilding about 3,000 infected files with data of the accounts and stocks from hard copy files."
"Launched in response to terror attacks in New Zealand in May, where a lone gunman killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch while livestreaming the massacre on Facebook, it calls for the "effective enforcement" of laws prohibiting the dissemination of terrorist content.
It also states that all action on the issue must be consistent with the principles of a free, open and secure Internet, without compromising freedom of expression."
"Singapore was one of the first nations to adopt a Bluetooth-powered contact-tracing app, fueling plenty of global debate about the best way to deploy the technology. SafeEntry will advance that debate as its introduction surely suggests that contact-tracing apps have their limitations."
"THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
The fear of losing control aside, many hawkers also have to deal with another major challenge: Digital technology, which entails some basic competence in logic and literacy - much to the horror of those who only received some primary school education, typical of the older generation of hawkers."
"SINGAPORE: Personal information of about 129,000 Singtel customers was stolen after a recent data breach of a third-party file sharing system, the local telco said on Wednesday (Feb 17).
Singtel has completed initial investigations into the breach and established which files on the Accellion file transfer appliance (FTA) were accessed illegally, the company said in a news release."
"FROM THE BOING BOING SHOP
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Singhealth, a Singaporean public health service, suffered the worst breach in Singaporean history, losing control of 1.5 million peoples' data; included in the breach was prescription data on 160,000 people, including Singapore's prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong."
"Microsoft has blamed human error after its search engine, Bing, blocked image and video results for the phrase "tank man" - a reference to the iconic image of a lone protester facing down tanks during the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square - on the 32nd anniversary of the military crackdown.
Users reported that no results were shown for the search query in countries including the US, Germany, Singapore, France and Switzerland, according to Reuters and Vice News."
"Using the robot will reduce the need for staff to patrol the grounds, says NParks, and it "lowers the risk of exposure to the virus." According to local newspaper The Straits Times, the board is also considering deploying the robot elsewhere in the city. Signs posted in the park ask visitors not to "disrupt" the robot on its patrols."
"The Home Team Science and Technology Agency (HTX) - which collaborated with ICA to roll out the scanning system - said in a statement that iris patterns have a higher degree of variation and uniqueness as compared to fingerprints, and are therefore "more robust and reliable.""