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Activists Worry About a New "Green Dam" In Vietnam
alphadogg writes "Human rights activists are worried that new software mandated by Vietnamese authorities may lead to an Internet clampdown in the country's largest city. In April, local officials issued new regulations covering Internet cafes and service providers in Hanoi, ostensibly designed to crack down on hacking and other service abuses. Buried in the regulations is a mandate that service providers must add special software to their domain servers, used to authenticate systems on the network. Nobody quite knows what the software is, but activists in the US worry that it may be used to clamp down on Internet usage in a country that has seen more and more grassroots information-sharing on social networks over the past year. Last year China tried to force PC makers to ship Green Dam censorware with all computers sold in the country, saying the software would help crack down on online pornography. But Chinese authorities — already known for their notorious Great Firewall — eventually backed off from their plans after critics raised a host of privacy, security and system stability concerns, and Chinese Internet users showed no interest in installing the program."
Since nobody knows what the software does, and a copy hasn't been released yet to be installed, anything said about it is pure speculation. "Internet Service Retailers Management Software" could be just about anything.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Hanoi may be the capital but it's not the most populous city, not even by a long shot. It recently gobbled up a nearby province but it's still smaller than Saigon, now officially Ho Chi Minh City.
Because there are those in power who never want them to figure it out.
let them ask for help when they need to
Well if we don't raise the issue then the ones in power will work to ensure they cannot. See Iran and their crackdown a year ago.
At which point it's obvious the government gives not a damn for its people and instead exists only for itself and whatever broken ideology it follows.
True. I'm sure that secret software mandated by a communist government to be installed at their ISP is entirely in the best interests of their population.
Cisco's Backdoor for Hackers
Cisco isn't actually the primary target of Cross' critique. He points out that all networking companies are legally required to build lawful intercepts into their equipment.
You can proceed with whatever rambling rationalization your reality demands.
This could spread to Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. From there it's just a short swim to Australia!
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
Internet related crime is so out of control in Vietnam, that despite privacy/human rights concerns, I completely believe that the motive is to reduce crime, and I hope that it will be effective.
For one thing, Vietnam isn't China. Vietnam fought China after it defeated the US (which was after it defeated France), and beat China back out of its borders, too.
For another thing, Vietnam's government is a very hands-off government. If anything the main problem for Vietnamese people is their government's failure to lead and protect them from people with private power. For all its styling itself a "Communist" government, Vietnam's actual government is quite far in practice from anything like the totalitarian control that is essential to orthodox Communism.
I don't find this story's inferences about Chinese(-style) spyware credible. I'd bet the regulation is just some placeholder for something nobody has, or even knows what it is. And it's more likely to be some kind of crony app that gets mandated so some bureaucrat's family makes money. Which would make it just as much like the US as like China.
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make install -not war
You know that reminds me of this story my old man told me during the early 50's, his parents were broke. Under the poverty line, kids were eating next to nothing, and so on. Someone came by asking for money to *help feed insert starving kid wherever in a 3rd world backwater*, and my grandfather asked: "Why don't you help us." Their response was: "You don't need it."
And so life goes on.
Om, nomnomnom...
"At which point it's obvious the government gives not a damn for its people and instead exists only for itself and whatever broken ideology it follows.
"
That's not "obvious" in Viet Nam.
It's leaders fought free of the French and the US, repelled a Chinese invasion attempt, and guided the country into tentative steps toward Capitalism (Intel fab, etc). Just because they don't immediately open the floodgates by turning loose uneducated people with a democracy doesn't make them evil.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
That war has been over for a very long time.
No non-participant has any business fapping to it in place of trying to understand the new reality in the region.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
These are human-rights activists concerned about a potential "Internet clampdown". Why isn't the Internet in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Surely a revision is needed to validate this path of logic, although to lose access to a wealth of information via the Internet is very painful, that I will admit.
It's interesting to me to hear what people's ideas are of what Vietnam is like. I think some people think VN is kinda like the middle east, but in SE Asia.
I first came here a year ago and knew almost nothing about the place except pho, ca phe sua da and beautiful girls. I didn't even know much about the war except that a lot of young men went off and died in a war we Americans lost.
What's interesting to me though is that Vietnam is so different from what a lot of people expect. Vietnamese people are really happy, probably the happiest people I've ever met. Also, not a single one of them has brought up the war from the 70's.
There is a pretty amazing local free market economy where people set up shop on the side of the road if there is a demand for a service on any given day, and they make money sitting there with a sewing machine, a fruit juicer or a basket of crabs. A motorbike rider becomes a taxi when they spot you walking with a pack.
It's beautiful too, Ha Long Bay has amazing landscape and wildlife, and the Island of Phu Quoc in the Bay of Thailand has gentle, clear, warm water. The mountains have cool weather, so cool that you sometimes need a jacket even in summer.
The fashion is great because they make cheap versions of all the expensive stuff that gets shipped to first world countries, and it looks great on slender bodies that live on the natural foods that are grown all over the country. There are plenty of cafes with HDTVs showing movies and music videos from all over the world, playing music and serving fresh fruit smoothies.
The food is good and natural. Rice is grown everywhere, so you get it fresh and from local farmers. Fruits are also grown everywhere, naturally enough that if you pick a banana you better eat it within a few hours or it'll go bad.
Yes, the government is officially communist. You don't see it most of the time though. I was discussing this with a Russian friend and she said that VN communism was a joke compared to how it was in Russia where the gov owned every business. The local free market like what you see today in VN would not have existed in the USSR. Also, the involvement of the gov here is so minimal on a day to day basis that you don't actually experience the communism, it seems like a pretty free country for the most part, albeit pretty conservative.
The roads are often bad, but some of the progress they are making is fantastic. Huge bridges, smooth highways with higher speed limits.
As for the OP, that sounds like a hard thing for this country to enforce. Vietnam is one of the most corrupt governments in the world. Even so, I don't agree with mandated software installation. Besides, what are they going to do, port it to every platform, or do they expect everybody to run Windows?
All in all, the "new reality" of Vietnam is pretty good. I'm happy here. I won't stay here forever, but I wouldn't be upset if I had to. That is to say I am not more upset at the communist Vietnamese government than I am with the republic US government.
I'm living in VietNam, and I think the article have some misleading
The government only require the Internet Cafe have a server that install a Internet cafe management software accepted by the government, although the accepted list isn't issued yet, but they don't force the Internet Cafe to install any software. It's mostly to prevent student to access porn and some other blacklisted site in Internet Cafe.
I think it's fine, because most internet cafes are using one, like Vinagame's CSM