Following last month’s ruling by the Singapore Broadcasting Authority, a senior minister has defended his country’s decision to regulate the Internet (CI No 3,006), claiming measures that will promote rather than impede the on-line medium. Information & Arts Minister George Yeo told Southeast Asia Business Times that the government intends to advance Singapore’s position as a world hub. For the majority of cases, our job is to ensure privacy, ensure the security of information, to ensure that property rights are safeguarded, he said. All those who are running the system have the responsibility which we will progressively put into law to safeguard information which they can access because they are system administrators. But the denizens of Singapore are not noticeably being restricted from what they send, so much as what they receive. On September 15, new rules came into place under the mantle of the Singapore Broadcasting Authority, which is to block a few dozen sites – all pornographic. Singapore’s domestic Internet service providers must install systems capable of screening out ‘undesirable’ Web sites, such as those offering pornography or racist literature. All three of Singapore’s domestic Internet access providers have installed these. Some 150,000 of Singapore’s 750,000 households are on line and the government aims to connect the entire population of 3 million by 1999.
