[frankchn]

As a Singaporean who is now in the US, it is the same thing over here (with a bit more secrecy pre-Snowden).

I will be very surprised if Comcast (my ISP) doesn't have fiber splitters along their backbones feeding my (and other people's) internet traffic to the NSA.

edit: Also, with the recent revelation that NSA targets Tor users, I would not be surprised if by virtue of using a VPN, you are automatically deemed more suspicious.

[toyg]

The thing is, in the US it's a fairly recent development, whereas in Singapore it's intrinsic to how the government works.

Yes, the US have periodic bouts of widespread semi-fascist repression (McCarthy, GWB etc), but they traditionally subside after a few years. TIA eventually generated Snowden, for instance, and in 20 years time it's very much possible that we'll look back at early 2000's paranoia as a dark age of sort. There is no indication of this ever happening in Singapore.

It might be due to issues of scale (repressing 3m people is much easier than doing the same to 400m) or culture (the whole Constitution / Freedom mindset in the US is very different from the "community first" approach more typical of Asian countries), but that's how it is.