ISD is an intelligence agency that does with
domestic security. As long as our nation exist at the
crossroad of the world, we will constantly face threats ranging
from espionage, foreign subversion, terrorism to locals trying to
break our racial harmony. Other than it's intelligence gathering
role, the ISD has a executive function which is by the power
of a number of acts (which includes the ISA) to arrest
and detain perpetrators of those acts.
To say that the ISD is no longer relevent to Singapore is
to say that threats such as espionage or terrorism no longer exist.
Those threats exist all the time and as long as they exist, there
must be a department to deal with it be regardless of it's name.
The name of that department is ISD. However relevent it may be to
Singapore, the work of ISD must be check so that the
ruling party will not use it for it's political gain.
The ISD as a intelligence agency has a unique and contradictory
characteristic. As a very powerful agency it must be check to
prevent the misuse of it's power however it cannot be done so
with great transparency due to the nature of it's work.
If you look overseas, there are other countries with similar
agencies such as the british MI5, american FBI, australian ASIO and
russian FSB.
ISD cannot be replace by ordinary domestic law enforcement
agencies such as the Singapore police force due to the nature of
their work. Certain work that it does may be outside the power and
the ability of the law enforcement agencies or they are one of
those work that requires controlled identity thats why a
faceless intelligence agency need to come into play. Even
if they manage to downsize ISD into one of our local law
enforcement agencies that means to turn it from an agency to a
department, the approach to their work is gotten be the same.
I think you have strayed off to some other issue by referring to
existence of threats from diverse sources.
The key issue here should be whether ISA which gives
extraordinary power to the government without justification for
arrest without warrant or detention without trial is desirable and
lead to abuse.
I do not think ISA was promulgated because other countries have
MI5 or FBI so we too must have them.
I do not think too ISA was conceived because we as a country
need to deal with external threats with higher power over citizens
as well alongside to deal with external threats like espionage.
We can always have specific laws dealing with treason, espionage
or external threats etc and confine the arrest without warrant to
certain cases of such nature under those respective laws to deal
with crimes against the state.
It is not so right to apply ISA to the general population for
almost any form of threats which can be easily abused to over-power
the citizens for dissent or political participation process.
MI5, FBI or other such-like organizations are not directed at
their own citizens if these organizations have any extraordinary
power to arrest anyone without trial at all. In any event in
countries like UK and USA their governments are subjected to legal
and constitutional check for any abuses so even if they have
extraordinary power over foreign threats like espionage etc these
will not likely to be abused against ordinary citizens like the
church members who happened to be vocal or critical of
government.
In UK or Australia their police too are subject to rights and
freedoms of citizens not being infringed under the constitutions or
laws such as the harbeas corpus. If we must have ISA we have got to
have safeguards too such as these countries have to prevent abuse
of power against own citizens or dirty vendetta by dictatiorial
regimes everywhere.
It is noted you have agreed too there is a possibility of abuse
of ISA to put away people of political threat to the government in
power.
That is enough for us citizens to ask for disbandment of ISA for
the possibility of abuse is real and it will lead to overall
abuse.
We have to look at the larger picture to see to it ISA may not
result in our eventually creating a dictatorial regime.
May be that is one reason why up to now we are not able to see a
more open, accountable or transparent precisely because of ISA as
power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Think of the
larger picture.