An unexpected U-turn by the Singapore government on its initial undertaking that TraceTogether data would only be used for COVID-19 contact tracing purposes wrought strong reactions from the Singapore public. In a commentary, RSIS Senior Fellow Teo Yi-Ling and Research Fellow Manoj Harjani explore what this means for public trust in future Smart Nation initiatives.

…Teo Yi-Ling is a Senior Fellow and Manoj Harjani is a Research Fellow with the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS) and Future Issues and Technology (FIT) Cluster, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.