Vietnam Internet restrictions come into effect
bbc.co.uk> Last month the US embassy in Hanoi said it was "deeply concerned by the decree's provisions", arguing that "fundamental freedoms apply online just as they do offline".
My hypocrisy-meter just broke.
Considering that the US has zero speech-related internet censorship, and the comparison is to a law banning sharing any news articles online and publishing any material opposing the government, I'd say the US still has a valid complaint here.
Vietnam is a communist tyranny that simply applying existing laws and policies to a new medium, so this isn't really a change.
Economists prefer percentages to absolutes, and trends to isolated incidents. 9/11 has not only halted the long trend towards increasing freedom, but began a new and troubling trend of growing tyranny.
Perhaps the U.S. isn't overtly attacking press freedom, but the U.K. is, informs the U.S. before every incident, and the U.S. couldn't be happier.
Events like this are a reminder of why technology like Tor and I2P are so important. When I was working in China, I was surprised by the number of people that were aware of Tor and those that I introduced it to were thrilled to have their freedom back. In Thailand, I found it installed in Internet cafe's to access blocked sites.
Tyranny is a bit overstated.
Said people in every historical state that was slowly sliding towards despotism.
But on the other hand, making the U.S. congruent to every despotic state tends to cheapen the sacrifice of those who actually had to live (and die) under those despots, instead of sipping a venti espresso at Starbucks while typing away on their MacBook Pro.
Some people sip espressos in North Korea, too.
Meanwhile, we (Americans) have more people living in cages than North Korea, China, Iran, and Vietnam combined. Most of them citizens, incarcerated after being subjected to extremely dubious trials for crimes related to drugs -- and whoops, look at today's latest headline: Drug Agents Use Vast Phone Trove Eclipsing N.S.A.’s
Relatively free states slide morph into corrupt police states precisely when the people sipping coffee with their luxury computers refuse to notice it happening.
> Relatively free states slide morph into corrupt police states precisely when the people sipping coffee with their luxury computers refuse to notice it
That's... at least mildly pretentious. What social ills are the brave bands of roving latté-sippers going to save the country from next? Anyways, history has shown that despots don't have to care about what the intelligentsia thinks.
Urrrgh, for fuck's sake: are you gonna make me trot out the 'First they came for the...' cliché (which like all good clichés is totally on point)?
Obviously, despots don't care what the intelligentsia or anybody else with < despot power thinks. But in a high-functioning democracy, it is only through the apathy or willful ignorance (or freaky racism / nationalism) of the citizenry that you get despots in the first place. We're not there yet, but are obviously on that path.
I assume you're caucasian and rarely have your luxury car searched at traffic stops, or your electronic devices searched at border crossings? Me too. Yay for us.
> are you gonna make me trot out the 'First they came for the...' cliché (which like all good clichés is totally on point)?
And also like any good cliché, says more than it really says. For instance, that there is no permissible reason for government to go after anyone since it logically follows that if we let government go after Party A, they are that much closer to going after Party B.
For that reason, instead of living my life by clichés, I try to evaluate each situation on its own merits.
> I assume you're caucasian and rarely have your luxury car searched at traffic stops, or your electronic devices searched at border crossings?
Caucasian, yes.
'Luxury' car, no. Unless the MP3 player is a luxury nowadays. It doesn't get searched at traffic stops, but that is probably because I've not run across a traffic checkpoint in years.
Maybe I should go visit the despotic America though, so that I can find out what a traffic stop is like? Where would I find that, as I've been all over the East Coast and have had no success yet in finding it.
I wouldn't say zero. Child pornagraphy and copyright infringement are still censored. (Admitadly, most copyright infringement is self sensored to assure DMCA compliance, but I still count that).
Child pornography makes sense though, I can't see any civilised society ever being okay with that because of the permanent harm it brings to those involved. The ban has been in place since before the Internet, and thus it was brought to the Internet too.
There needs to be rules, but they need to be sensible and not limit speech. The other side of that coin though is the laws against copyrighted material, most people don't care and download stuff illegally anyway.
I can't imagine lawmakers backing away from the Internet, and I don't really want them to because before you know it someone would be monetising child porn. No idea how you would even begin to solve the problem of balance though.
I do not want to enter into a discussion about the morality of child porn. However, regardless of you view on that, it is still a form of speech. US legal precedent explicitly allows for the limitations of speech under specific circumstances (such as intent and likelyhood to incite a crime, and malice with a reckless disregard to the truth). What is important to remember is that wheather we are censoring terrorist how-tos, child-porn, or political opponents we are still limiting speach.
Child pornography doesn't have a bright line, though. I don't think 16/18/21 are particularly different (I.e. societies could choose any of those). There still seems to be debate around the edges of simulated, simulated using real photos of non sexual underage people, self pics to other minors, etc. And IMO the bigger issue of knowing possession vs. it being totally radioactive.
>There still seems to be debate around the edges of simulated
Not just the edges. I've seen porn sites self censor obvious fictional porn depicting children, because of concern over hosting child porn.
The thing where Australia banned porn with smaller (A/B) breasted adult women because it "contributed to pedophilia" was amazing, too.
Yes, on the other hand, those things flow more freely in China.
Of course it's a valid complaint. Just because the US has a number of, lets call them unfortunate, stances on the definition on freedom doesn't mean they can't make complaints. But you must admit that this does make them seem somewhat hypocritical?
You are free to any speech, so long it doesn't contain any videos of soldiers gunning down children from a helicopter, or you do not "encourage" copyright infringement, or post how to circumvent a lock on property you have bought, or enables gambling, or if it might look like one of the forbidden form of porn if you tilt the head on the side.
Then its DNS takedown time. Either by making sure that resolvers will lie, or removing it from the Internet on a US "because we say so" basis. No judge, no jury, no trial. Those stuff is only for "real" things, not virtual "sites" on the Internet.
The US doesn't block YouTube, Facebook, blogspot, wordpress, imgr...uhm...they don't block anything that I know of.
No need to censor if watching people means they'll self censor.
Some people need to feel America isn't free or else how do you explain why they are not free. It has to because of America or else they are responsible for their own country.
These people do not live behind the GFW and don't understand what real unfreedom is. I agree the USA should avoid becoming unfree, but we aren't even close yet.
I'm in Hanoi. Tried to click on the link. Blocked. BBC.com totally blocked here.
I'm in Saigon. Use 8.8.8.8 for your DNS, unless you are accessing via 3G.
I use unblock-us.com for my home network.
Honestly, I don't see how they plan on enforcing this except for having a look see at already well known dissident bloggers.
And, frankly, I think this 9X generation, which seems to be drowning in unprecedented narcissim will flip this whole place on its head when they get a bit older. Vietnam will be an even more interesting place than it is now when that comes to pass.
Had to look up the "9X generation". For those interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9X_Generation
There's a few things going on here that I think are going to have serious influence on the next 10 years.
First, the 9X kids, as I mentioned before, want what the rest of the world already has. They've had a taste and I don't think they are willing to concede.
Second, a lot of Viet Kieu (Vietnamese from abroad) are returning and they have a lot of money. They're going to also want to maintain some semblance of what they've grown accustomed to in Canada, US and Australia. If there is anything I've learned from living here, money can buy almost everything.
The rest of SE Asia is growing at a faster rate. Vietnam is only really beating Indonesia.
I think what most people don't get is that communism here doesn't mean what you probably think it does. Capitalism is huge here and it's only going to get bigger. So, one or the other is going to have to give.
Finally, this decree is kind of toothless. They have neither the money or the knowledge on implementing it. Their idea of blocking facebook was (Facebook is generally available anywhere now) to block some DNS entries.
You would be naive to think they don't have the capability to block Facebook (or any site, for that matter).
By what measure is Vietnam beating Indonesia?
Sorry I was really tired when I wrote that, I meant Cambodia not Indonesia.
>they are also willing to reject established traditions, ignore elder class values, listen to classical music
>classical music
What?
I was using 8.8.8.8 for my DNS (I think it's google DNS?), but it was ridiculously slow for me. Wasn't sure if I was being penalized somehow for switching DNS provider and ended up changing back to my IP's DNS.
It's a good point about the 9Xers. I don't know how politically aware or motivated they are, but I do know that, like the rest of us, they want free access to information and communication. Even if it is just to send instagrams of their bun cha.
Switching DNS providers could cause problems simply because your new provider doesn't do as good a job in your area, not because of any intentional penalization. You could try opendns (208.67.222.222), or some other 3rd party provider.
Does anyone mind copy/pasting the article to pastebin? Wouldn't mind reading it
A controversial law banning Vietnamese online users from discussing current affairs has come into effect.
The decree, known as Decree 72, says blogs and social websites should not be used to share news articles, but only personal information.
The law also requires foreign internet companies to keep their local servers inside Vietnam.
It has been criticised by internet companies and human rights groups, as well as the US government.
Vietnam is a one-party communist state and the authorities maintain a tight grip on the media.
Dozens of activists, including bloggers, have been convicted for anti-state activity in the country this year.
The new law specifies that social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook should only be used "to provide and exchange personal information".
It also prohibits the online publication of material that "opposes" the Vietnamese government or "harms national security".
Last month the US embassy in Hanoi said it was "deeply concerned by the decree's provisions", arguing that "fundamental freedoms apply online just as they do offline".
Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based group that campaigns for press freedom worldwide, has said the decree will leave Vietnamese people "permanently deprived of the independent and outspoken information that normally circulates in blogs and forums".
The Asia Internet Coalition, an industry group that represents companies including Google and Facebook, said the move would "stifle innovation and discourage businesses from operating in Vietnam".
Cheers, thanks.
Thanks for that.
I don't know how bad these things are in Vietnam, but please be careful reading texts like these over plain HTTP. HN is https for me, but pastebin isn't. You could use https://pastee.org instead.
Ofcourse, make sure that the certificate you get is actually from a non-vietnam authority. I think you can enforce this by running chrome.
What is the punishment for reading banned news?
An interesting question, though from this piece anyway, it sounds like the focus is on the publishers not the readers.
It's interesting to see a new HN account created 4 hours ago with such a "dangerous" username. Especially in a post about censorship in Vietnam. Well played.
What's wrong with national security? At least as an Vietnamese I don't want Arab Spring comes to our country.
Is it security to prevent people to be able to discuss what is being done by the government?
Most people who have that freedom do not feel insecure.
Most people who have the freedom to critique their government feel insecure at the idea of having that ability limited in any way.
It would be interesting to hear the argument, why is this law a good thing for the Vietnamese people?
The thing is, BBC or other foreign media always push things like this in a way that Vietnam Government is against "human rights", and "freedom"... From my point of view, they just want to attack Vietnam Government and make it look bad, by telling half-truth. This is not the first time. My English is not good enough to give you a clear understanding about that law, but it's not about "prevent people to discuss what is being done by the government". The exact word could be more close to "bring down the government", and that I think no government in the world let someone do that "in freedom". I dont say Vietnam Gov is good, but at least they are not that bad to bring down right now. All the people that "oppose" Vietnam Gov always close to "bring down", and tell half-truth or lying, and related to foreign countries. So I am fine with that part of the law. The other parts are about management, providing and using Internet services and information.