MAY 21 — This is a surveillance state. The eyeballs; they peer at you from everywhere.

Every public space is watched and watched again. Apparently, this keeps us safe.

But I remember Singapore being pretty safe 20 years ago, before mass video surveillance became the norm and the world had no shortage of crime, drugs, gangs, terrorism even then.

To keep ourselves safe from various perceived threats, we have given up an awful lot... most importantly, our privacy.

The right to go about our business without surveillance and without the need to explain ourselves to anyone so long as we do no harm to anyone else.

And it is one thing for the government and its agencies to watch us and another matter entirely when we begin to watch ourselves.

Achieving a situation where people watch each other and report back to the authorities must be the dream of those who seek power and in Singapore we have realised this dream.

Pictures and videos of Singaporeans infringing even the most minor laws are uploaded everywhere. Sometimes no laws are actually infringed but pictures are uploaded for revenge, out of jealousy or to make a self-righteous point.

Even if you are an otherwise good person who lives a totally legal life, you aren’t safe.

Every bit of public space is watched here in Singapore... but is that really a good thing? — Reuters pic

Today, we all must live in constant fear that no one catches us in a moment of careless indiscretion. A girl who had one too many drinks and stumbles on the sidewalk one night may find her picture uploaded with a salacious, moralising headline.

Videos of drunks, people loitering, making out, smoking with sensational captions are everywhere on our online space.

This is dangerous as it is an encroachment of privacy, a circumvention of the normal channels for interpersonal grievances (the police, courts, local council) but also because it opens the door for slander.

We see clips of people doing something but the videos rarely, if ever, tell the whole story. A clip doesn’t tell you what happened five seconds before or after and that can make all the difference.

What we have now is basically a system of mass trolling and vigilante justice.

People are accused, tried, condemned and effectively "executed” online by an angry and frivolous mob.

A video is posted of a couple fighting, someone vomitting etc. and netizens pile in with comments, criticisms and judgement.

In the comments that accompany these vigilante images, you see the real underbelly of the nation — the racism, sexism, ignorance and fear that seems to drive a surprisingly large segment of the population (though it is hard to ascertain how large).

Any researcher or policy maker looking to take the pulse of modern Singapore should spend some time looking at the videos and comments on some of these Facebook pages.

The experience is both enlightening and terrifying.

Despite the unsavoury nature of this snap, shame and comment culture the reality of the modern world is such that the right to post/upload and comment is basically fundamental.

And, of course, in some cases this can be very important/useful eg. to photograph an assailant or record an instance of police brutality etc.

So ultimately the solution can’t be to get people to stop posting... and anyway, they won’t. But there should be recourse for those who feel they have been misrepresented, defamed or frankly bullied and abused online.

It must be possible for victims of online kangaroo courts to take legal action (and we need to be careful this right to respond and take action shouldn’t be open to abuse by authorities looking to conceal information and incidents).

Also before we start down the path to litigation, the key here is to promote a culture where the first recourse isn’t to make videos. Positive outreach — event, community building — needs to be fostered and a culture of rewarding and emphasising positive actions should be a priority.

Here’s my suggested slogan for this effort: Help, don’t kaypoh.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.