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Vietnam Deploys 10,000 Cyber Warriors to Fight 'Wrongful Views' (bloomberg.com)

Posted by msmash on from the assuming-control dept.

Vietnam is deploying a 10,000-member military cyber warfare unit to combat what the government sees as a growing threat of "wrongful views" proliferating on the internet, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing local media reports. From the report: Force 47 has worked pro-actively against distorted information, Tuoi Tre newspaper reported, citing Nguyen Trong Nghia, deputy head of the general politics department under the Vietnam People's Military. The disclosure of the unit comes as the Communist government pressures YouTube and Facebook to remove videos and accounts seen damaging the reputations of leaders or promoting anti-party views. Facebook this year removed 159 accounts at Vietnam's behest, while YouTube took down 4,500 videos, or 90 percent of what the government requested, according to VietnamNet news, which cited Minister of Information and Communications Truong Minh Tuan last week. The National Assembly is debating a cybersecurity bill that would require technology companies to store certain data on servers in the country.

9 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. China, Facebook, Vietnam, Google, Youtube by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    All deploying resources to fight, "wrongful views"

    Venezuela doesn't have to because no one has electricity.

    LOL!

  2. Sure, when others do it... by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In Vietnam they fight wrongful views, we're fighting fake news, can someone tell me what the difference is?

    Preferably someone from the agreeable reality department.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re:Sure, when others do it... by Opportunist · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Care to elaborate how it's different?

      I'd love to get more fact checking and research into our news, but the time you spend fact checking and doing background research, some agenda outlet carpet bombs every social and asocial media with their bullshit, drowning the single well researched and sourced article you might eventually produce in the noise.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:Sure, when others do it... by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Fake news is a huge problem, I agree. A year later and it still shows no signs of getting any better. Recently, four big scoops were run by major news organizations â" written by top reporters and presumably churned through layers of scrupulous editing â" that turned out to be completely wrong: Reuters, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, and others reported that the special counsel's office had subpoenaed Donald Trump's records from Deutsche Bank. They weren't. ABC reported that Trump had directed Michael Flynn to make contact with Russian officials before the election. He didn't. The New York Times ran a story that showed K.T. McFarland had acknowledged collusion. She didn't. Then CNN topped off the week by falsely reporting that the Trump campaign had been offered access to hacked Democratic National Committee emails before they were published.

      Forget your routine bias, these were four bombshells disseminated to millions of Americans by breathless anchors, pundits, and analysts, all of them feeding frenzied expectations about collusion that have now been internalized as indisputable truths by many. All four pieces, incidentally, are useless without their central faulty claims. Yet there they sit. And these are only four of dozens of other stories that have fizzled over the year.

      If we are to accept the special pleadings of journalists we have to believe these were all honest mistakes. They may be. But a person might then ask, why is it that every one of the dozens of honest mistakes are prejudiced in the very same way? Why hasn't there been a single major honest mistake that diminishes the Trump-Russia collusion story? Why is there never an honest mistake that indicts Democrats?

      When all the errors are in the bank's favor, you can be forgiven for thinking there's more at work than sloppy arithmetic.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    3. Re:Sure, when others do it... by gbjbaanb · · Score: 2

      No worries there - you'll provide the links to how they were wrong, surely.

      and I'm not just doing the usual "citation needed" designed to make you run round in rings, I am genuinely interested because the only part of fake news Breitbart was accused of turned out to be a trivial mistake where they said "church" to refer to a cathedral.

      I thought Breitbart held itself to better journalistic integrity than most, simply because any error on their part would be seized upon by the mainstream eager to discredit it.

    4. Re:Sure, when others do it... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      Care to elaborate how it's different?

      America: Russia bad.
      Vietnam: China bad.

    5. Re:Sure, when others do it... by DRJlaw · · Score: 2

      I am genuinely interested because the only part of fake news Breitbart was accused of turned out to be a trivial mistake where they said "church" to refer to a cathedral.

      Only part, eh?

    6. Re:Sure, when others do it... by Aighearach · · Score: 2

      If you're recycling propaganda about "socialists" to describe Vietnam, you're just another blathering idiot.

      McNamara even was in a movie where they go in detail into why they were totally fucking wrong to measure the Vietnam War through that lens.

      Don't be such a fucking idiot. At least go download the documentary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      If you think Vietnam has anything to do with "socialists," you don't know what socialism is, or anything about Vietnam.

    7. Re:Sure, when others do it... by AHuxley · · Score: 2

      When the West does IT?.
      "British army creates team of Facebook warriors" (31 Jan ‘15)
      https://www.theguardian.com/uk...
      "Is America Prepared for Meme Warfare?" (Feb 1 2017)
      https://motherboard.vice.com/e...
      "So, Why Does the Air Force Want Hundreds of Fake Online Identities on Social Media?" (Feb 19, 2011)
      https://www.cbsnews.com/news/s...
      "BBC World Service gets funding boost from government" (23 November 2015)
      http://www.bbc.com/news/entert...
      The new "Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act"
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

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      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"