PAP now very scared of hackers. calling that terrorism

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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


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