The group, called SGWikiLeaks, is believed to be circulating obscene photos and videos of women. - COURTESY OF JORDELIA TAN
SINGAPORE (The Straits Times): When she posted a photo on Instagram of herself and her friends wearing cheongsams, she was shocked when the same picture appeared online showing them wearing lingerie instead.
That photoshopped image was later circulated in a Telegram chat group that had similar revealing doctored pictures showing other Asian women and girls in compromising positions.
The group claims that some of these women are Singaporean.
It has also claimed to be linked to administrators who ran a previous group which peddled similar obscene content.
The police said reports have been made and they are investigating.
Digital content creator Jordelia Tan, 23, recalled her horror when she found out about the Telegram chat group through one of her Instagram followers.
She said: “I was shocked when I saw the (doctored) photo. It looked quite realistic, which means whoever did this took some effort to photoshop another person’s body onto my face.
“I felt disgusted and it just felt very wrong. I kept thinking, why would someone do something like this?”
She said she and her friends had a potluck meal during Chinese New Year, and because they were all wearing cheongsams, they wanted a photo together.
She said: “It was an innocent photo that was photoshopped into something sexual.”
The police said: “We would like to remind the public that it is illegal to transmit any obscene materials by electronic means. Members of the public may wish to lodge a police report if they are aware of persons engaging in such activities.”
Tan said she reported the group, called SGWikiLeaks, on Telegram and plans to make a police report soon.
The group is believed to be circulating obscene photos and videos of women.
Checks showed that SGWikiLeaks’ administrators appear to have created multiple chats on Telegram under the same name, with more than 26,000 members in its main chat group.
The other chats have between 4,000 and 22,000 members. One of the chat groups requires a fee of US$250 (S$333) for admission.
It is not known where the group is based, but it claims to offer obscene material, mostly of Singaporean women.
Another Telegram group, SG Nasi Lemak, made headlines in 2019 when four men were arrested for their involvement in the now-defunct group that hosted obscene photos and videos.
Yeo Siang Tiong, general manager for South-East Asia at cyber-security firm Kaspersky, said such chat groups continue to run rampant because of the sheer amount of data available online for harvesting.
He said the rapid proliferation of Internet technologies places women and girls at an increased risk of experiencing digital violence and sexual exploitation.
“From public social media accounts to corporate networking accounts, the availability of and accessibility to personal photos and faces are endless,” said Yeo.
“A simple trawl through a search engine will fuel cyber criminals with enough photos for a simple lewd photoshop job to cause serious damage.”
To tackle this issue, he said tougher prosecution and penalties should be imposed on administrators of such groups, and that stronger education efforts to counter cyber exploitation need to reach people from a young age.
Kelly Leow, senior communications manager at the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware), said the actions of the Telegram group seem to constitute technology-facilitated sexual violence and, in particular, image-based sexual abuse.
Aware’s Sexual Assault Care Centre saw a total of 227 cases of technology-facilitated sexual violence in 2021. Half of these involved image-based sexual abuse.
Leow said Aware is very concerned about the prevalence of Telegram groups and other online communities that engage in such violent behaviour.
She said: “It is important to recognise that sexual violence does not have to be physical to be traumatising for a survivor.
“The impact of voyeuristic recordings and sharing intimate images online is often wrongly thought to be less ‘real’ compared with physical forms of sexual harassment.
“In fact, the shame and loss of control are amplified in such cases because of the unpredictability surrounding the use of images and the ensuing aftermath.”
Worried that other women may also have had their photos doctored and distributed in the chat group, Ms Tan said: “This is something no one should experience, because no one deserves this.”
SG Nasi Lemak was a Telegram chat group created in November 2018. It hosted obscene photos and videos believed to be mostly of Singaporean women and had 44,000 members at its peak.
It reportedly promoted vice activities as well. Members had to upload and share pornographic material to remain in the chat, and as the group grew, 29 of its members were given administrative rights.
Between March and October 2019, the police received several reports against the group, and four men were arrested.
In 2020, two men linked to the chat group were each sentenced to a year’s probation after pleading guilty to possessing obscene films.
Another man, 39, who was an administrator of the group, was sentenced to nine weeks’ jail and fined $26,000 in 2021. He admitted to distributing obscene material, facilitating the provision of sexual services, and possessing obscene films.
That year, the fourth man, a 27-year-old, was sentenced to mandatory treatment for a year after he pleaded guilty to transmitting obscene material via electronic means and possessing obscene images.
For being in possession of obscene films, an offender can be jailed for up to six months and fined up to $20,000.
