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    The premise that the right to free speech shouldn't extend to inciting racial or religious friction is one I don't necessarily agree with, although I would be curious to hear what other Hubskites think about this.

You'll note that every time someone says something racially insensitive and overly public from the anonymity of twitter, the masses come out of the woodwork and scream that they ought to go to jail. In Singapore, they actually do. (Or, hopefully, they just don't bother.) It's worth noting that much of the west has a severe double standard on this (and in Britain, at least, people get prosecuted for the exact situation I'm describing; just as they do in Singapore).

    It is interesting to note that defenders of US surveillance practices will sometimes say that if you're not a criminal, why should you worry about surveillance? It seems that among Singaporeans, there is a slight tweak to that aphorism: "if you're not a criminal or an opponent of the government, you don't have anything to worry about." Coupled with all of the individual surveillance, this seems like a system ready to be abused, and although the article offers virtually no examples of such abuse, I have to wonder in what myriad of unpublicized ways these powers are being used.

I would hazard a guess that the so-called slippery slope argument which I despise so much is actually closest to being a potential reality in a city with a culture like Singapore's. We've seen seemingly stable situations plunge into martial law or dictatorial rule several times in Southeastern Asia. According to the article, things are trending in the other direction, but that doesn't mean a whole lot. We'll see.

My takeaway with regard to the United States (and there's clearly subcontext on FP's part) is that this system is "perfect" (works most optimally, assuming benevolent rulers) for a city-state with limited population and size. If you implement something like this in the United States -- in other words, even more encompassing than what we have -- you get the same amount of intrusion but way too many things slipping through the cracks. I bet. I don't know.