JUNE 7 — Daily, as I wait for the lift on the ground floor of my 12-story block, I while away the minutes by studying my image in the lift’s CCTV screen.

Often it’s to fix my hair, suck in my gut or ponder if flip flops really do go with everything in our tropical heat but sometimes the pixelated picture beamed back at me in real-time leaves me feeling afraid.

Who exactly is watching me while I’m talking to myself in the lift and why?

The in​-​lift CCTV camera is one of five surveillance cameras I can spot in the small area by the building’s staircase and landing. They aren’t subtle or discreet — clusters of lenses are visible on the first flight of stairs and it really looks disturbingly like a prop from a movie featuring the dystopian future.

Again, this is just the lobby — the more general area  around my building houses literally dozens of cameras,  so many it’s difficult to count and it was in the act of trying to count them, out of curiosity, I realised something quite important: this country is truly a surveillance state.

It’s no longer a prospect, a possibility from the distant future — it has happened, it is quite open so you can see it all around you (and it can see you).

Even in 2013, Foreign Policy magazine dedicated a lengthy article to Singapore’s perfection of the surveillance state and its deployment of US technology that could not be deployed in its home country due to concerns over privacy and civil liberties.

In the US and EU, over the last few years the state’s surveillance methodologies have come under greater scrutiny. There are now restrictions that bar or regulate the mass collection data, and Edward Snowden, whose whistle-blowing antics helped spark the debate on public surveillance, called these restrictions a “profound” achievement, and “a historic victory for the rights of every citizen.”

But in Singapore — not only is this debate on the matter of government data collection absent, the entire conversation is actually headed in the opposite direction entirely.

A couple of weeks ago, I spied in the national daily Straits Times the following headline: More ‘eyes’ on crime in carparks as residents with in-vehicle cameras come together

What followed this headline was a chirpy assessment of how the “Vehicles on Watch initiative puts drivers with such cameras in partnership with the police.”

Basically the police are encouraging vehicle owners to fit surveillance cameras, particularly ones that work 24 hours not just when the car is running, in their cars and share their footage with the authorities.

Yes. Not only is the state keen to keep track of us, our neighbours are too and they’re handing over this content to the state readily, willingly, voluntarily.

Everyone is spying on everyone and the state is spying on us all. But rather than any sort of distaste or horror, online at least the most common response to the article appeared to be “where can I buy one of these cameras?”

All this with little discussion as to the legal ramifications, how admissible this footage would be in court, how long it can be stored for and by who.

The modern city state of Singapore employs some of the most sophisticated surveillance systems in the world to "watch over” everybody. — Picture by AFP

What about personal vendettas? What if a person’s sole reason for taking part in the scheme is to catch their neighbour failing to pick up their poodle’s poop?

But again more than how the whole scheme will operate in practice, for me at least the core issue is why?

Singapore, as the government  constantly and gleefully points out,  has some of the lowest crime rates in the world, and it has maintained these low rates for years - long before the deployment of wall to wall surveillance technology.

We have a highly-trained and competent police force supported by thousands of auxiliaries, we have a respected intelligence service, the best trained and equipped military in the region, a flourishing economy and a highly-educated population with minimal incidence of civil unrest etc. 

So what is there to fear?  Because it’s fear that must be at the root of any sort of surveillance system. Why does a shop-owner install a camera — because he is scared his employees or customers, or someone else might steal from him? For a private shop-owner that might be fair enough but what exactly is there to fear under the void-deck of my heartland HDB block? Terrorism? Ethnic riots? Organized crime?

None of these honestly seem like an immediate threat to my block.

While I accept that having security cameras in busy public places, stations, airports, intersection etc is useful — every building in our nation? Every vehicle?

Does the government really believe that without their omnipresent, omniscient eyes we would really degenerate into some sort of dark anarchy? Surely according to the government’s own narrative we are a developed, civilised nation that values courtesy and where the rule of law is deeply entrenched?

Whatever the fear that’s driving it, Singapore has deployed arguably the most sophisticated surveillance system in the world -- the Risk Assessment Hor​izon​ system which the government uses to monitor the nation has expanded even beyond its original mandate.

It’s not just security cameras but every aspect of your personal life — from your movements, your web browsing records,  social media posts, phone conversations that are, potentially, at the government’s disposal.

That is a lot of power collecting in the hands of a few.

I was born in 1984. I don’t want to live in it. Do you?

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.