I’m curious... While you were living there did you feel repressed? Did you feel like you were walking on eggshells and had to watch every move and everything you said or wrote?
Did you feel like all you got was state propaganda? Could you discuss whatever you wanted with your friends without feeling like someone was eavesdropping?
Some of the oddest things in surveilance was the use of their cable company. I was visited mulitiple times in the evening, after I returned from work, to recieve a update on my cable box and such, which I never used. We are talking 9pm visits wondering why I'm not using the cable, etc.
There is hardly a wrong in the Strait Times, their paper of record, the government is almost always correct. There is no anger in opinion articles, there is no troubles pointed at. If you do, there is the option of sedition. In one such case a MRT station was built in a odd location, and a local gave the minister a stuffed 'white elephant', which is a common phrase in se asia. The minister said it was almost a seditious action.