PAP now very scared of hackers. calling that terrorism

[HongKanSeng]

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/cyber-hacking-akin-to/893852.html

Cyber hacking akin to terrorism if it endangers lives: Shanmugam
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By Dylan Loh
POSTED: 20 Nov 2013 22:24
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If cyber hacking leads to people's lives being endangered, then such hacking is akin to terrorism, said Minister for Law and Foreign Affairs K Shanmugam.

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Singapore's Minister for Foreign Affairs and Law K Shanmugam. (AFP/POOL/Matt Rourke)
ENLARGECAPTION*
SINGAPORE: If cyber hacking leads to people's lives being endangered, then such hacking is akin to terrorism.

This point was made by Minister for Law and Foreign Affairs K Shanmugam at a dialogue with university students on Wednesday evening.

He said the government takes cyber hacking very seriously because of Singapore's dependence on information technology.

Addressing the queries of the students, Mr Shanmugam said people's jobs could be affected if hackers attacked the commercial sector and took down banking and financial systems.

He also cited the recent case of the Singapore Art Museum website, where people's personal data was compromised.

Mr Shanmugam said cyber attacks could yield other consequences, for example if medical records of hospital patients were stolen.

He said the government and the people are intricately linked, so an attack on the state will have consequences on both parties.

“Hacking in real terms is nothing short of terrorism,” said Mr Shanmugam.

“When somebody says, ‘you, the Government, or you, the people of Singapore, do this, and if you don't, if you don't agree with me, you don't change the laws, I don't like these laws, I'm going to hack’, it is no different from saying, ‘if you don't change the laws in the way that I want, I'm going to bomb you or I'm going to put your house on fire or I'm going to do these things to you’."

"When you say you hack into government websites, you are attacking the people of Singapore...in two ways. One, when data is stolen, that's actually your data. Often it can be individual data that the government has - people's data. Second, government is there to serve the people, so it's service delivery by the government that's going to be impacted," added Mr Shanmugam.

The minister said there are democratic ways to voice disagreement with government policies, but cyber hacking is not one of them.

He said cyber attacks are no different from other crimes, where people can get hurt.

He added that Singapore is a society that values law and order, and violence on the internet should not be condoned.

Mr Shanmugam said: "The government cannot, should generally try not to have laws which try and restrict individual freedom. The idea must be to give people maximum freedom possible. Laws come and only to the extent that is necessary to prevent you from harming the rest of society."*

Mr Shanmugam also said the government will do its best to guard against cyber attacks.

But there will be hackers who will continue to try to test the system.

He said it is important for society to be able to recover from attacks and move on.


- CNA/ec

 

[peppertail]

What is the difference between spraying graffiti on a wall and defacing a website?

I wouldn't automatically call them terrorists but anybody who damages others property or endangers lives should be punished for it according to the law.

 

[Confuseous]

Personal data of some 4,000 individuals who participated in Singapore Art Museum (SAM) events were heisted from their outsourced website and posted on a New Zealand based storage website on November 5. The news about the data file was disclosed only yesterday, 20 November.

SAM claims it was alerted of the theft by the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) on the same day, Nov 5. Earlier on Nov 4, IDA had stumbled across a tweet by a "CtrlSalad", boasting of the possession of "3.6k email, numbers, names and IP addresses including the Government's", and sat on it for one full day. SAM's official excuse for its own tardiness in reporting the cybercrime was that they were "estabilishing the extent of the incident". In most probability they were in panic mode, trying to classify it as "technical glitch", "compromise", or "intrusion". Hack was the last word on their minds, and for good reason. A media lawyer at Pinsent Masons said affected individuals may be able to sue on grounds of negligence, with the liability falling on the party controlling access to the data.

In the black week of Nov 5, the mainstream media were in a feeding frenzy, harping on police investigations of three incidents wherein websites were defaced by “The Messiah”, including those of City Harvest Church co-founder Sun Ho, the PAP Community Foundation and the Ang Mo Kio Town Council. IDA blamed outage of Singapore government websites on technical issues, denied hackers were involved. And culminating in the screen capture of the jiak-liao-bee image at the intrusion of the Istana website.

The one time that a spade was called a spade was when the Ministry of Education (MOE) admitted 13 school websites were hacked yesterday. A "Jack Riderr" was fingered as the hacker, as his name was listed in a hackers' database, being associated with a "Johore Hacking Crew". Screenshots of the hacked sites featured a man brandishing a sword, with accompanying words "Muslim Hackers". Some school principals were not even aware their schools' websites were hacked. MOE said they are referring the matter to the Singapore Police Force (SPF), who already have their hands full investigating individuals who responded to the call for "fellow Singaporean brothers and sisters" to dress in black and red on November 5, when Anonymous had planned to make a "virtual protest" on Guy Fawkes day. The foreign hacker will have to wait.

- http://singaporedesk.blogspot.sg/2013/11/a-real-hack.html

 

[johnny333]

Maybe it's just an attempt to create a boogey man to justify cracking down on Sporeans

 

[blackmondy]

Using our own money to screw us is also terror-LEEsm.

 

[laksaboy]

As far as the pappies are concerned, dissent is terrorism.

 

[PrinceCharming]

Maybe it's just an attempt to create a boogey man to justify cracking down on Sporeans

As far as the pappies are concerned, dissent is terrorism.

Totally agree.

And with the above excuse, there will be legislations to curtail Sinkies' freedom of speech and expression on the internet.

Also Pinky will use the above excuse to spy on Sinkies' emails, chats, videos and phone conversations.