
Death in Singapore - Lightning
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/afbddb44-7640-11e2-8eb6-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2KzVJrFJo
======
arbus
I'm a Singaporean and have served for some time in the military( Compulsory
National Service as well as a short stint as a regular) and I think that the
comments below seem to misunderstand the level of control that the government
has over speech, people and companies in Singapore.

We have many restrictive laws here but they are very selectively enforced. As
long as you stay away from "hot" topics such as direct criticism of the ruling
party and sensitive issues such as immigration, you are ok. But if you make
too many waves, there are many ways in which such selective enforcement can
come back to bite you.

On an individual level, you will get much more attention on things like your
tax returns. Your Provident Fund usage can be limited in many ways(It is a
opaque system and they don't need to give you any justifications)

If you own a company, it will also be subject to a much higher tax scrutiny.
They can choke your company by limiting the number of foreign talent that you
can hire( again an opaque process). They can reject your applications without
any reasons and simply say better luck next year.

Even with all these pressures, Singapore is a great place to do business and
just enjoy a generally high quality of life as long as you don't do anything
foolhardy or get really unlucky with the cards that you get dealt.

On a side note, if the person in question above was involved in some tricky
business, then I would not put it past this government to take drastic
measures

~~~
contingencies
Singaporeans: "We have high quality of life!" "We have relative freedom of
speech!" "We are modern!"

Rest of world: Singaporeans pay top dollar for tiny apartments, have no
nature, no drugs (and thus little art), no real political freedom, are forced
to military service (read: military brain washing on top of the
social/education system serving) and self-censor routinely whilst claiming
their government is really OK! On top of this, they are all kind of insecure
because the way work is omnipresent, everyone competes all the time on
appearances, the extreme financial burden of having a kid there (even though
few do, because they are educated enough to know it's a death sentence of
decades of mortgage, even with the government kickbacks) and the increasing
immigration of younger, better Mandarin-speaking, less demanding workers from
China, India, Indonesia and Malaysia.

~~~
bitcartel
Singapore, a tiny piece of land with no resources, has been transformed over
50 years from a colonial backwater into a first world country. People once in
poverty now live much more comfortable lives. Of course things could be better
but the issues you raise are no different from the issues people face in other
countries and major cities.

------
Matti
Not the first death of that kind in Singapore:

"Family suspects interference in David Widjaja case"

<http://sgforums.com/forums/3317/topics/363855>

"However, it appeared the court process was intentionally directed to a
conclusion of suicide despite evidence showing a strong possibility of murder,
according to David's family and the verification team.

"We have strong evidence that he was murdered but that fact was not brought up
in the court," David's father, Hartono Wijaya, told a press conference Tuesday
at the National Commission on Human Rights."

[...]

"He added there was a suspicion David's death was related to his research:
"Multiview Acquisition from Multi-camera Configuration for Person Adaptive 3D
Display".

"His friends said his three-dimensional study could be used for various
purposes, either for entertainment or even for military needs."

"And we must not forget that after David's death, there were two unusual
deaths at NTU - his professor's assistant *committed suicide' four days later
and another researcher was hit by a car 25 days later.""

EDITED: Having read more about the specific case, it seems to me that the
official story sounds plausible enough. It's not at all clear whether there
was foul play involved.

~~~
contingencies
Absolutely chilling. What are the odds of being hit by a car in Singapore? One
would think that, given so few people have them and that there are so few
roads large enough to speed down, with the culture being so conservative,
drugs near-absent and surveillance omnipresent, that it would be rare indeed;
further, it would be trivial to catch the perpetrator. Were they caught in
this case? Not, I suppose. It feels as if western state-assisted
assassinations of civilians are becoming a more frequently documented reality,
and not just for CIA rendition, UAV or economic sanction victims, either.

~~~
gph
Let's see what the statistics have to say, first for Singapore:

"Total pedestrian fatalities dropped from 49 in 2011 to 44 in 2012" [1]
Singapores' population is ~5 million[wikipedia], so the odds of being killed
by a car for the total population is ~0.00088%

For a comparison let's look at NYC, which has roughly double the population
within City Limits (~8 million for NYC):

"From 2002 to 2006, 843 pedestrians were killed"[2] That's ~211 deaths per
year. Making the percentage odds ~0.0026375%

So you're about 1/3 as likely to be hit and killed by a car in Singapore than
NYC. That's fairly significant, but there are a couple things to point out.
NYC does have a significantly higher population density and I would assume it
has a higher amount of vehicle traffic.

I think overall while it's clearly less likely to be killed as a pedestrian in
Singapore, I wouldn't exactly call it "rare". And while I'm no professional on
Singapore, I don't know why you characterize Singapore as somewhere that
doesn't have large roads or many vehicles (There are 965,192 vehicles in
Singapore[1]). Also I don't think CCTV is nearly as ubiquitous as you think,
from the few news articles I've read they probably only have a few thousand
with more only starting to roll-out recently[3][4]. It's certainly not up to
London standards, and I doubt even there ever single pedestrian death is
caught by CCTV.

[1][http://driving-in-
singapore.spf.gov.sg/services/driving_in_s...](http://driving-in-
singapore.spf.gov.sg/services/driving_in_singapore/information_traffic_statistics.htm)

[2][http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nyc_ped_safety_stu...](http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nyc_ped_safety_study_action_plan_technical_supplement.pdf)

[3][http://www.safetrolley.com/latest-news/singapore-police-
inst...](http://www.safetrolley.com/latest-news/singapore-police-install-high-
tech-cctv-cameras-fight-crime-1784.html)

[4][http://www.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne+News/Singapore/Story/A1S...](http://www.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne+News/Singapore/Story/A1Story20111017-305422.html)

~~~
contingencies
I don't see how NY is relevant at all. Perhaps this is relevant, though:

"With a population of 5 million, Singapore has one of the world's highest per
capita execution rates. While official figures are not produced, according to
Amnesty International there have been at least 400 executions over the past
two decades." - _The Guardian_ , 2010-11-16,
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/nov/16/death-
discrimination-singapore-shadrake)

------
contingencies
Fellow hackers: stay away from anything connected to the defence industry.
Security might be fun, it might pay well, but the ethics are terrible, things
get used for bad purposes, and you can easily lose your freedom or worse.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Shane Todd worked for the IME, a globally regarded research organisation based
in a country that scored higher in the 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index than
the U.S. (87, #5 versus 73, #19) [1]. If he worked for the defence industry
then so would an Oracle engineer deployed at Northrup Grumman or a SpaceX
engineer in competing with Lockheed Martin.

[1] <http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2012/results/>

~~~
homosaur
What does corruption have anything to do with this? I would think it's largely
irrelevant.

And also, you're right, those people do work in the defense industry.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Working in any industry in Pakistan or Nigeria (both #139 on the Corruptions
Perceptions Index) is probably going to be more life-threatening than working
for the Danish, Finnish, or Kiwi (tied for #1) defence establishments.

~~~
homosaur
It may be relatable at extremes like you mentioned, but I'd have to see more
evidence of a direction relationship between corruption and safety. Of course
countries with little to no government will be more corrupt on some NGO's
index.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Observing the 2012 Corruptions Perceptions Index scores [1] and the latest
year United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime intentional homicide rates [2],
one finds an an exponential relationship between the two with an intercept
(homicide rate per 100 000) of 19.9, slope of -0.033, and regression
coefficient of 0.25 (N=176). See chart [3].

Murder is the most vivid example without adjustmenting for income, but one can
trace similar patterns across ambulance response times, food quality,
transport efficiency, etc. Transparency International's report on their metric
is a good starting point.

[1] <http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2012/results/>

[2] [http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-
analysis/statistics/...](http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-
analysis/statistics/crime/Homicide_statistics2012.xls)

[3] <http://imgur.com/a1N5WXm> chart!

------
brown9-2
_Mrs Todd read the notes and handed them back to the detective. “My son might
have killed himself, but he did not write this,” she said with some calm.

The notes were surprising, she said later. One praised IME and its management.
Another apologised for being a burden to his family. Neither sounded like
Shane. One, Shane had never been a burden – “he had excelled at everything he
put his mind to,” Mrs Todd said. Two, “he hated the way IME was run and the
way top management treated people.” Shane’s girlfriend later said she was sure
Shane’s last moments were not spent lauding IME. “He hated his job,” she
said._

It's always amazing how in (possible) conspiracies like this, the perpetrators
make one simple mistake that so clearly gives the whole thing away.

~~~
raylu
The "being a burden to his family" bit really stuck out to me. That is
something that has been deeply embedded into east Asian culture for a long
time and would not be at all strange for an Asian to say. On the other hand,
it's not something you usually hear from someone brought up in America.

~~~
brown9-2
I am not Asian but it the idea of praising your company's leadership, even on
the brink of death, seems stereotypical "east Asian culture"ish too doesn't
it?

------
api
I'm amazed at how many elite-school tech types idolize Singapore for some
strange reason. I've heard a number of gushing recommendations for the place
from the MIT/Harvard set.

I personally see it as some kind of horrible sci-fi "Stepford Wives" "smile or
die" dystopia... like a yuppie latte-sipping upscale version of North Korea.
It makes me thankful for ghettoes and dirt and bums, given the alternative.

~~~
rdtsc
I find that libertarian types love it. Its dystopia is closer to their own
dystopia.

~~~
gph
Are you sure you meant libertarians? I don't see how anything about Singapore
would fit in with libertarian ideology...

~~~
SilasX
Low tax rates, low burden of regulation, market-oriented systems for
traditionally government-provided services (tolls for driving, making
individuals bear a proportionate amount of the cost of health care), more
individual control over government old-age savings system.

~~~
redthrowaway
Sounds more neoliberal than libertarian.

------
creamyhorror
This story is all over my FB wall. Rest assured there are many concerned
Singaporeans listening, and it'll be harder to ignore this case now that the
FT has brought it to the world's attention. I'd like to hear the IME and
police's side of the story, though - hopefully a higher body will conduct a
proper investigation to settle the facts and determine motives.

We rarely get serious cases of cover-ups being exposed, so if this is the real
deal, it'll be a very interesting one, especially if it concerns foreign
governments.

~~~
varunkho
wondering why didn't the person possibly looking/cleaning the evidence from
the harddrive take it with him in the first place? Isn't Suspense theory
indicating something deeper?

> Hours later, in the middle of the night, someone went into Shane’s hard
> drive and accessed five folders, all labelled IME. ... Since the time of
> Shane’s death is uncertain, Massoud could not say who looked at the IME
> files. > But Massoud found activity, again, on several more IME files on the
> night of June 27, three days after Shane’s body was found. He said someone
> looked at IME folders – including one labelled “Supervisor” and one labelled
> “Goal Setting”

Edit: Usually the actual suspect would want to remove the evidence itself – in
this case, the harddrive is carefully tampered with. Still the contained
information is enough to put the blaim on a party – or the actual accuser is
more profound than it is semed?

~~~
steve-howard
It's possible that his laptop, with the external hard drive, was accessed
remotely, and that the "speaker" was simply removed by the police when they
took the laptop. If it was on a corporate network (as it would be if he used
it to back up data) then they might well have been exposed to some form of
corporate spyware. Of course, we can't know with the computer under wraps.

~~~
ginger_beer
Does anybody else wonder how an external hard drive could be mistaken as a
speaker ? Seems quite improbable to me that police would remove the laptop but
not the external hard drive attached to it. Also, once the owner died, how
could the laptop continued to make backup of the files inside, enough for them
to know that there was an 'attacker' who accessed those files? This suggests
that there's some form of automatic backup script running in the background
AND the laptop had been turned on throughout AND connected to the external
hard drive. Up to the moment of 'recovery' by the police, who stupidly failed
to notice this ?

Whenever we watch Holywood hacking movies, we couldn't help but notice the
hilarious 'techie' scene. However, there shouldn't be such consistencies in
this article because this is supposed to be based on reality.

~~~
kevin_p
There's a picture in the article - it's in a dock, almost vertical but leaning
back at a slight angle, which makes it look a bit like a speaker. Direct link
to the image: [http://im.ft-
static.com/content/images/bb2e144a-7653-11e2-8e...](http://im.ft-
static.com/content/images/bb2e144a-7653-11e2-8eb6-00144feabdc0.img)

~~~
ginger_beer
Ah I see. Yes it does resemble a speaker then. Was viewing the article from
mobile, and all the images were stripped out. Still, several things in the
article couls probably be attributed to the Singaporean police force's
incompetence and not outright malice. Being corruption-free != being
competent. The family didn't help either by withholding evidence. They should
have created a mirror of the external drive, then handed the original to the
police (instead of offering to do it the other way around).

~~~
jessaustin
_The family didn't help either by withholding evidence. They should have
created a mirror of the external drive, then handed the original to the police
(instead of offering to do it the other way around)._

This is ridiculous. The Todds lost their son. The police did a desultory job
of investigating his death, and the family have the drive only because of how
poorly the police secured the scene. On what planet do the Todds owe the
police anything?

~~~
ValentineC
Randomly, I got curious on what drive it was, and it may have been a Seagate
GoFlex Pro Ultraportable: [http://www.seagate.com/sg/en/external-hard-
drives/portable-h...](http://www.seagate.com/sg/en/external-hard-
drives/portable-hard-drives/) (look under the Performance tab)

I'm not sure what powers the Singapore police may have, especially since the
Todds may already be out of the country, but they certainly didn't have any
problems persuading a filmmaker to turn over her phone, laptop and desktop for
an investigation: [http://spuddings.net/2013/02/07/mha-investigates-ex-bus-
driv...](http://spuddings.net/2013/02/07/mha-investigates-ex-bus-drivers-
allegations-against-police/)

~~~
jessaustin
Haha, I had just assumed it was one of the thousands of no-brand devices
available cheap at Sim Lim Square. It wouldn't be odd not to recognize a drive
in whatever cheap plastic case was available: it might actually be a case
molded originally for a speaker!

Thanks for the Spuddings link; that is fascinating. I especially appreciated
the complaint about non-uniformed vs uniformed police. Due to a quirk of
technology adoption around the time I lived in Singapore (i.e. everyone else
was already on mobile phones), you could be reasonably certain that every
Chinese man in his 40s-50s with sensible shoes and a pager on his belt was
plainclothes police. It was amusing to watch them watching, and I can confirm
the complaint that they paid more attention to Asian residents on labor visas
than to anyone else. You would never see a clutch of skinny Indian guys
walking around, without one of the plainclothes guys trailing them by twenty
yards.

------
VexXtreme
Sounds like a classic case of corporate murder.

In the cozy world of web startups, we engineers have an incredible amount of
freedom and control over our lives and what we do... but megacorps and
companies connected to the defense/war industry are known for treating their
engineers as fungible resources that can easily be disposed of once they get
the job done. Sounds like something out of a hi-tech Tom Clancy spy novel?
Think again, things like this happen for real, there's your proof.

Like someone else said here, stay away from that industry altogether. For the
people in control of that industry, engineers aren't super ninja rockstars
like they would be at a Silicon Valley startup, they are just means to an end.

~~~
miked
>> Sounds like a classic case of corporate murder.

No, it sounds like a case of Chinese government murder, something they have
plenty of experience with. They must have known that there was a good chance
that he would talk to the US government. The more interesting aspect is that
the IME, a agency of the Singaporean government, would appear to be in on at
least the suppression of the story.

~~~
disbelief
Just wondering who had more at stake here: the Chinese Gov't or the US Gov't?
If he was the one guy with the skills and knowledge (at IME) capable of
operating this device, and his work was a potential national security threat
to the US, then wouldn't _they_ have more motive to kill him than China?

I don't think it would have come as much of a surprise to the US that China is
interested in cutting-edge semiconductor tech, nor would be the details of
what IME was up to. I don't see much of an upside for China killing him,
shedding tons of light on his work, and Huwei's dealings with IME, plus losing
their top specialist. They tend to just blanket deny things when caught red-
handed anyway.

~~~
brown9-2
Considering his "suicide" happened on the last day of work at IME and he was
coming home to the US, it would seem the cat was out of the bag on that one.

------
nshepperd
> The Todds agree that Shane’s hard drive may be a critical piece of evidence
> in how he died and could shed fresh light on the vulnerabilities of
> technology safeguards. But they question how the Singapore police have so
> far investigated Shane’s death, so they won’t hand over the drive. They are
> offering, instead, to send a copy of the contents of the drive.

Good. This _is_ pretty much the only sane way to handle digital evidence,
anyway.

~~~
njloof
Shane had no place taking home a copy of his _work computer_. Didn't deserve
what happened, but that was just foolish... unless he was an informant.

~~~
jlgreco
If he was fearing for his life, he could have been intending to use it as
insurance.

------
lystergic
Quote1 [But the stress made him come back to God, she said. “Mom, can we
pray?” Shane asked in April. “If I survive this, Father, I want to live my
life to serve you.”]

I find it odd that the Todd family did not invoke the attention of US gov
earlier. They argue that Shane Todd had been anxious and feared for his life
for some time before his death. Had that been the case, and Shane Todd was
unable to leave Singapore due to his situation, surely the US gov should've
been informed of the situation and help transfer Shane back to the US. The US
gov would also have had an interest in doing so since Shane Todd had reported
to his mother that he was possibly compromising the security of his home land
due to his research in Singapore.

Quote2 [“He said he felt he was being asked to compromise American security.”]

Quote1 indicates Shane means to dedicate his life to 'God'(phrased Father) if
he survives. I assume that any parent hearing their child stating this would
immediately take action as to save the life of their child and thus contact
some instance of US gov.

~~~
jessaustin
Someone who worried he was harming national security and then continued at his
position for any time could face repercussions from the USA government for
that. Obviously in hindsight it would have been better to get Shane out of the
whole situation by any means necessary. In general, however, you shouldn't get
FBI files started on your loved ones. After all, what would seem more likely:
that one will be hassled by the FBI after one's mother calls the FBI, or that
one's widely-respected first-world-government-affiliated employer will
orchestrate one's murder upon resignation?

------
ck2
_Huawei has been deemed a security risk by powerful US lawmakers_

 _Shane had deep misgivings about the project he was working on and feared he
was compromising US national security_

The fact he didn't walk away in the first moment he felt this way, most likely
means one of the US agencies killed him. We are apparently already allowed to
kill citizens without trial when they are not on US soil.

Well written article though and the presentation was helpful.

~~~
sophacles
I really don't think this follows. Even if we take everything presented in the
article at face value, there are a lot of questions unasked (let alone
answered) in the article:

1\. How did he come to the conclusion/concern he might be violating US
national security?

Speculations:

* He could have come to the conclusion on his own, he was apparently a smart guy.

* He could have been asked about his work by embassy officials.

* He could have heard/overheard a conversation that lead him down that path.

* other reasons I don't have any knowledge of.

2\. Once he became concerned, what actions did he take?

Speculations: * He kept it to himself and his family.

* Being described as an all-american boy, he could have gone to the US embassy with his concerns. The general perception of US citizens is if you report things like this, even if you're unintentionally involved, you are not targeted.

* He could have started asking uncomfortable questions at work.

3\. Why did he copy a bunch of (presumably NDA) "trade secret" research onto
his own hard drive?

Speculation:

* He just wanted a copy of his work. (I know I've done this with certain bits of code)

* He wanted to give a gift to his new employer

* He wanted something to bargain with in case the USG investigated him.

* He was just going to hand it to the embassy.

* He didn't do it with any intent, it was just part of a normal backup routine and he didn't even think of it.

4\. Why would that hard drive not have been destroyed or taken, particularly
if it was accessed after death? (especially since the place was unlocked)

Speculation:

* Deep spy game stuff -- the accessed files were altered to be "wrong"

* There isn't foul play

* There is more dangerous information that they were really worried about, not the stuff he had

* No one realized the information was not on the company network, and some IT guy was just spot-checking against official work to make sure stuff wasn't lost.

5\. If there are national security implications, what things are we not being
told because of classified?

No speculation on my part here. I have no way of pretending to have a
reasonable understanding of this world.

6\. What don't we know about Shane Todd? (Not in a blame the victim way, but
there is lots of a person's life that can't be described in an article of this
size. Is there something about him his family didn't know? Is there something
they are embarrassed to talk about?)

Speculation dependent questions:

1\. If he went to the USG as a good citizen, what did they do?

* They could have advised him to not abruptly up and leave for personal security reasons.

* They could have asked him to get them copies of the research.

* They could have blown him off, or told him, "thanks, but don't worry about it".

2\. Who are all the people who would be interested in targeting him?

* His employers (as speculated/suggested in the article).

* The US government, as you speculate.

* Governments who pay/partner with his employers

* Singapore government, wanting to keep various ties quiet

3\. If they are after the research, why kill him rather than just steal his
computers?

------
confluence
This kind of shit still happens? Holy crap. I'm probably going to be involved
in the defense industry over the next decade - and this was a serious eye
opener. Robotics is fun - getting killed for it isn't. I'm staying the hell
away from foreign countries and contacts from now on.

~~~
crusso
Not that we have great statistics on it, but it would seem that the odds of
getting killed just because you're in the defense industry are negligible.

You should be more concerned about traveling on the highway, traveling by
plane, the food you put in your body, the amount of exercise you get, and how
often you risk being hit by lightning.

That said, if you find yourself in Asia being asked by agents of foreign
governments to violate US security concerns... smile and nod your head then
hastily get your ass to the US Embassy for debriefing and extraction.

------
batgaijin
Wow... that is beyond weird. From what I've read I always thought Singapore
was quite the corrupt-free police state.

~~~
hboon
It isn't a police state. And in recent years, it has been shown that it isn't
corruption-free either.

~~~
homosaur
Really, then what exactly would you call it? You are essentially subject to
all manner of ridiculous punishment for what would be considered minor or non-
offenses in most free countries. Most of their elections are uncontested. You
can dress it up because their streets are clean and safe, but it's still
facism.

~~~
agilord
I've visited Singapore just for a few days, but based on that experiment, the
western media is overdoing this Singapore-bashing. I'd strongly suggest to
visit the country, or at least get familiar with its history, its surrounding
neighbors, theirs relationships, theirs relative cultural and economical
differences. After that you will understand them better, and you will realize
that its not that black-and-white as the media would like to suggest.

Heh, this gets downvoted for what? Oh well, feel free to stay in your bubble,
and don't ask questions that will contradict your beliefs.

~~~
philh
> I've visited Singapore just for a few days, but based on that experiment

I spent a couple of weeks in the US, and never ran afoul of bad cops or drug
laws. I conclude very little from this, because even if things are as bad as
reddit says, I would not expect to run afoul of those things in such a short
time if I'm not breaking any major laws.

What bad things would you expect to see in just a few days, if the western
media's Singapore bashing is not overblown?

~~~
gurkendoktor
I'm not sure if the grandparent post really meant it that way. It's not that
you don't see anything bad while you are in Singapore, it's that you get a
feeling for Singapore's situation. I've only been in Singapore for a short bit
and I've met ethnic Chinese who were plenty happy to live in safe Singapore
now, and not in the neighboring countries anymore (e.g.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_13_Incident>)

------
rdl
This is terrifying. Either it's a tragic suicide (which hurts even more given
that there have been so many high-profile tech suicides recently), or it's an
escalation of low-grade economic/technology/cybersecurity war between the US
and China.

~~~
homosaur
Not recently on the suicides, mate, always. The only recent thing is the
rockstar status of these folks where it hits the news.

------
pingou
Maybe it's because I'm on a mobile device or I'm from France but I'm told I
can't read the article unless I register on ft.com.

Does anybody have a link that might work better ?

~~~
yareally
The pastebin given is probably good enough, but you can also run it through
google cache (add cache: in front of the url and search for it on google). If
it does not work still, add strip=1 to the end of the cache url so it does not
load anything from the site. Here's a link to it with that + run through
viewtext.org:

[http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwebcache.google...](http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwebcache.googleusercontent.com%2Fsearch%3Fclient%3Dopera%26q%3Dcache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F2%2Fafbddb44-7640-11e2-8eb6-00144feabdc0.html%2523axzz2KzVJrFJo%26sourceid%3Dopera%26ie%3Dutf-8%26oe%3Dutf-8%26strip%3D1%26complete%3D0%26pws%3D0)

------
john3572
Pretty obvious that the Chinese military industrial complex had Shane Todd
snuffed. The Singapore police and government are caught in the middle and had
no other choice but to whitewash the whole thing. The obvious conclusion is
that if you're a brilliant young American or European working on something
sensitive in Singapore then this could happen to you too. Be very careful...

------
verytrivial
I wonder if the Todd family have transcripts of the Skype calls where Shane
aired his concerns regarding the demands being made of him, and what he was
planning to do about it went back State-side -- I venture that the Chinese
government does.

------
ayah77
With the Singapore media reporting nearly every event that happen on the
island, from the mundane to the salacious, how is it that the unusual death of
a young American expat gets no ink at all? Obviously a higher up must have
ordered SPH to suppress the story. Why? As history has shown time and again,
once there is a cover up, the bells should be ringing... Something's rotten in
Singapore.

~~~
ftay
Suicides generally don't get reported unless they are exceptional in some way
(e.g. celebrities, murder-suicide combo)

------
siliconviking
“The United States has offered FBI assistance to the Government of Singapore
on the Shane Todd case" (but Singaporean authorities have not accepted the
assistance) - what is the jurisdiction for the FBI to pursue this
investigation without Singaporean consent? Doing that sounds like an
appropriate measure at this stage (a little surprised that it hasn't already
happened).

~~~
DrJokepu
They have obviously no jurisdiction but they might have access experience,
money, human resources, technology and information Singaporian authorities
might not necessarily have access to. This kind of cooperation is fairly
common in cases involving multiple countries, but obviously they can only
conduct an investigation in Singapore with the consent of the Singaporean
government. They are free to conduct an investigation within the United
States, however.

~~~
ValentineC
I'm more curious as to why the Singaporean government has yet to accept the
assistance. While Singapore may wish to protect its sovereignty when it comes
to law enforcement (i.e. police), I feel more unsafe knowing that the police
investigation was lacking (and possibly closed, considering they've considered
it a suicide) compared to what the FT has reported. Not a good thing for a
country widely perceived as having little crime.

------
doktrin
Meyi

------
AlexeiSadeski
Families of the suicidal always blame everyone else.

~~~
HeyImAlex
Did you actually read the entire story? While I'm wary of anything I read on
the internet, if FT is being completely truthful you can't help but think that
things are a bit odd. From the beginning I felt like it was probably just
grieving parents gripping at straws, but the strangeness just kept piling
up...

~~~
AlexeiSadeski
Things are odd, yes, but I imagine that suicide cases are quite frequently
odd...

~~~
Confusion
Not in the eyes of outsiders. In this case even outsiders, such as myself,
think the story doesn't add up, provided the facts from the story are
accurate. If the police says holes were drilled in the bathroom walls to bolt
in a pulley and subsequently no holes are seen, then something is very wrong.

