Discourses and practices of surveillance in Singapore

Abstract

This thesis aims to explore the overarching theme of discourses and practices of surveillance in Singapore. It will explore this topic through examining government discourses of surveillance and monitoring in Singapore and how they have been legitimized over time, discourses of surveillance practices and how they have been created and normalised over the same period, and surveillance practices themselves. This paper argues that discourses on surveillance and its practices in Singapore have followed from and have been embedded into larger narratives which have already been normalized in society, hence making it easier to normalize surveillance as well. The paper will explore these themes from the early 2000s until 2014. This thesis also hopes to fill the gap in literature about how surveillance practices were developed in Singapore, since there is no work that has studied discourses to see how they played a role in this development. This paper hopes to frame these debates within larger realms of data and privacy to emphasise on the connections between them and show the subsequent privacy implications of surveillance for citizens and the society as a whole.