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Vietnam Lawmakers Approve Cyber Law Clamping Down on Tech Firms, Dissent (reuters.com)

Posted by msmash on from the taking-a-stand dept.

Vietnamese legislators approved a cybersecurity law on Tuesday that tightens control of the internet and global tech companies operating in the Communist-led country, raising fears of economic harm and a further crackdown on dissent. From a report: The cyber law, which takes effect on Jan. 1, 2019, requires Facebook, Google and other global technology firms to store locally "important" personal data on users in Vietnam and open offices there. The vote in the National Assembly came a day after lawmakers delayed a decision on another controversial bill that had sparked violent protests in parts of the country on the weekend. Thousands of demonstrators in cities and provinces had denounced a plan to create new economic zones for foreign investment that has fueled anti-Chinese sentiment. Some protesters had also derided the cybersecurity bill, which experts and activists say could cause economic harm and stifle online dissent.

46 comments

  1. so? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Is not each country allowed to have their own laws?

    I just see complaints about freedom crying from a non western nation; one that best the pants off the US.

    Last I checked the nation isn't actually communist. So this is sensationalistic. There are no actual communist nations around these days. And no, China is not communism; it's state capitalism with free trade zones that are used to prop up their economy in a capitalist world.

    1. Re:so? by PPH · · Score: 1

      Last I checked the nation isn't actually communist.

      Standard rebuttal from a communist. Communism is great and beautiful. Until it represses the people. Then it's "not actually communist".

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    2. Re:so? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The US is just about as capitalist as they come, and yet people there are also repressed. Repression is not a hallmark of communism.

    3. Re: so? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The USA isnâ(TM)t a capitalist country. If you think it is and base your argument on that belief, your argument will fail.
      The USA has capitalistic elements, socialist elements, elite elements, theocratic elements, and other elements. The USA is a hodge-podge.

    4. Re:so? by sentiblue · · Score: 2

      I was born and raised in Vietnam. I can assure you it's a communist country. And so for your information when you say there's no communist countries anymore that's very very wrong. The most power of them is China. Another is making lots of headline news last couple days is North Korea. The other 2 that I know of are Vietnam and Cuba. So let me sum this up for you: You don't know what you're talking about.

    5. Re:so? by techno-vampire · · Score: 1

      ...one that best the pants off the US.

      Ha, ha. It is to laugh. Neither the VC nor the NVA ever beat the US in the field. Even the Easter Offensive, a massive invasion by the NVA in 1972, resulted in huge losses of men and material for them and gained them nothing but tiny finger-holds south of the border. They only "won" the war because the anti-war movement here persuaded the politicians (falsely) that the war was unwinnable. I realize that this isn't what your history books say, but trust me, because I was there on the Gun Line helping beat them back.

      --
      Good, inexpensive web hosting
    6. Re:so? by Dances+With+Sharks · · Score: 2

      I spent a few weeks in Vietnam this Winter. Free enterprise was rampant. The economy seemed to be doing very well. On average, the people were happy. Probably happier than the average American. I didn't see the desperate poverty that is common in third-world countries. I didn't see beggars like you'd see in most third world countries and large American cities. However, they apparently still punish people for thought crimes (As they do in Thailand, for example, for saying bad things about the King, or in other countries for saying bad things about their invisible superbeing in the sky). So I probably won't be going back unless that changes.

    7. Re:so? by l0ungeb0y · · Score: 1

      Name one instance where the people who rose up to install Communism were not handed instead even greater oppression and poverty. Communism is the worst sort of Populist scam. It preys upon an already impoverished people governed by a ruling elite who control the wealth by promising them equality and access to goods and service they never had before and once they rise up and bleed to bring about that change, the leaders of the Revolution instead replace the elite with an even smaller elite and take even greater wealth for themselves through State appropriation. Anyone championing Communism is either a useful idiot or wanting in on the scam

    8. Re: so? by manu0601 · · Score: 1

      This is not how the internet works, you can't force a site who sells a service to have s physical presence in every country on Earth just because some random government has decided it wants the ability to spy on their own people.

      Yeah, it works by storing data in a foreign country where the government has the ability to spy on every people.

    9. Re:so? by PPH · · Score: 1

      Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.

      - J.K. Galbraith

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    10. Re: so? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Got me there. China, a country who sells nearly everything it makes to the US is totally not communism.

  2. oh by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 1

    Wow, it's like they're a communist country or something!

    operating in the Communist-led country

    "Communist-led"? Is that like "Nazi-led" early 40's Germany?

  3. Well, hate speech must be dealth with by elrous0 · · Score: 1

    Please remember that hate speech isn't free speech. And hate speech is whatever the people in charge decide it is.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:Well, hate speech must be dealth with by PPH · · Score: 1

      Personally, I blame the UK for starting this.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    2. Re:Well, hate speech must be dealth with by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's no such thing as "hate speech."

      People should be free to express their opinions.
      It's your job as a "good citizen" to shout them down with your own opinions, not tell them that they can't voice theirs.

    3. Re: Well, hate speech must be dealth with by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, but there is such a thing as assault with words.

      What you say ends up as electrical signals in the recipient's brain, triggering memories, emotions and reactions, and more importantly, altering his neural wiring in the process, as that is how learnig neural nets work.

      Of course you are not responsible for someone's neural wiring. His history is.
      If he can't handle reality, he should get a therapy.

      And yes, even if you hurt them with what you said, that is not your fault, as literally everything might trigger someone. You cannot be expected to walk through such a minefield, let alone blamed for things you cannot realistically expect.

      BUT ... if you are *aware* of somebody's wiring, and *deliberately* say things that hurt, or just do not care (like a fuckingsociopath), *then that is bodily assault*.
      (Yes, dear philosophers, the brain and hence mind is part of the body.)
      You can see it in MRTs, examine the neural changes, measure the increased amount of firing reaching the pain center, and even numb it with paracetamol.

      The only reason there are still assholes and morons out there, acting like such pain "isn't real", is because it is hard to measure and they are as lazy as they are stupid.

    4. Re: Well, hate speech must be dealth with by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then your post was bodily assault. Lock 'em up, Roscoe!

  4. hero by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    REMEMBER THE MURDER OF IAN MURDOCH, creator of Debian Linux and leading member of the Free Software community, killed Christmas 2015 by the notoriously corrupt San Francisco police department.

    1. Re: hero by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How can a gang of criminals be "corrupt"?
      By following the law too much? ^^

  5. This breaks the Internet by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

    By my reckoning, more and more governments are deciding to do things regarding the Internet that will eventually break it into nation-sized 'walled gardens' like China has done. Add to that the possible actions by ISPs here in the U.S. now that Net Neutrality has been (only for the moment, hopefully) repealed, and the Internet as a whole will become quite broken. Really, it's not looking too good for the planet so far as Internet goes. Apparently we, as a species, are not evolved enough yet to get past all this childish bullshit so we can have something like the Internet without completely fucking it up.

    1. Re:This breaks the Internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And sadly, the people that are ruining the Internet are doing so for two motives: money and/or control. I loathe the term "monitization" or "monetize". Why does everything have to be about money? And governments hate not controlling and taxing everything they can. Working in the IT industry now for over 20 years, I can tell you that there are tools that allow *deep* packet inspection of even encrypted traffic. It's scary what the powers that be can do if they want, and they do seem to want.

      SSL/TLS/VPNs... they're all pie in the sky. Believe it or not, if you are the target of a state actor, they can see *everything* you do. Since Snowdon, devices have been introduced that reduce almost everything to plain text except for very good crypto like AES. Most VPNs cannot be trusted to not log traffic, or not sell source and destination to 3rd parties.

      I was shocked when I saw a demo of a certain large firewall corporation actually decrypt SSL/TLS packets on the fly, even those with PFS. The end users are on the losing end here because we have no real R&D houses for hardware development to stymie this. If there was a group that could make HW without it being intercepted and "fixed" (I'm looking at you, certain large router company who intentionally allows this), we could seriously encrypt end to end. This takes huge sums of money, time, and effort to deploy w/o compromise.

    2. Re:This breaks the Internet by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1
      I used to say:

      (Money == Power == Sex) == CONTROL

      ..and I'm far from being convinced that I'm wrong. The first two (Money and Power) really do seem to be a proxy for the third (Sex), and it all amounts to CONTROL. Humans want to CONTROL everything, and the more CONTROL they have, the more CONTROL they want; they want ALL of the CONTROL, and they don't care what the consequences are. The irony is even if they managed to CONTROL ALL THE THINGS, they wouldn't know what the fuck to do with it -- and subsequently they'd screw it all up. So it seems to be going with the Internet. They'll all fight for CONTROL of it, and it'll get shredded into little bitty useless pieces in the process, ruining it for everyone, everywhere.

    3. Re:This breaks the Internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree. What we've seen in China with their largely walled-in-garden draconian Internet we are also seeing in Russia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and even in the West in places like Brazil. The ME has long stymied free Internet traffic. And oddly enough, but to be expected, most of the gear and tools to do this are produced by American companies who love to tout how they use and believe in "open, honest communications" yet take money from some of the most oppressive regimes in the world.

      When I witnessed the aforementioned SSL/TLS real-time decryption, I knew we have entered a new era, whereby if you give a damn about your data and you need to, you must encrypt your payload before sending it over the wire. The guys that did the demo said they were already working on decrypting encrypted payloads because they are receiving requests from foreign interests. Encryption *can* work, but often times it's implemented incorrectly and this results in it failing you when you need it. Everyone touted ProtonMail as the panacea of secure comms, but it's wouldn't be terribly difficult for a state actor or their acolytes to crack the target computer and insert the JS necessary to grab both the account and mailbox passwords. OTPs are the only secure passwords and JS should never drive website logins.

    4. Re:This breaks the Internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd say it's more like (Money == Power == Control) -> Sex

      The motivation behind most human endeavors is to produce children and give yours an advantage over everyone ease's. A LOT of culture is built around that premis. Money, power, and control are all essentially synonyms and the reason they're desired is as a means to getting laid and passing a legacy on to the resultant offspring.

    5. Re:This breaks the Internet by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      I'd say it's more like (Money == Power == Control) -> Sex

      Yeah, you're right, really. Damn I'm tired and fatigued today, I know better than that. :-/

    6. Re:This breaks the Internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was shocked when I saw a demo of a certain large firewall corporation actually decrypt SSL/TLS packets on the fly, even those with PFS.

      Not enough space here to write it all but I've been doing SSL interception since the late 90's, mostly as a side hobby. The original proxy I created was a mix of apache and cgi scripts, why? Because I knew even then something wasn't right. I couldn't trust devices not to leak data through http headers let alone be trusted entirely by browsers simply because they used SSL (yes, that was a thing). I also didn't like the cache unfriendlyness of websites since I pay through the ass for bandwidth.

      Point is it worked. Complete and total interception with no verification by end devices. I would have done a presentation or two at Defcon but why risk being added to every no-fly list in the world simply for pointing out the flaws? "Fedcon" was meant as a joke not a forshadow.

      Instead I've watched as what was known then, now becomes "public" and the absolute knee jerk overreaction from companies.

      Fun fact, it's quite easy to detect devices like mine. Connections don't magically get reset without a reason. An ISP in Ontario used to have outages that would for some reason also reset end users connections. Guess they weren't as technically savvy as they thought because it was blatantly obvious they were doing interception.

  6. Can you truly Communist with... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...a McDonald's in Hanoi? No problem being fascist, though. Even works in McDonald's home country.

  7. Re:How is it that that is such a global thing nowa by SirAstral · · Score: 2

    "Any expert here who actually did proper research and is aware of his own ideologies and social conditioning?"

    If you cannot understand how intellectually bankrupt that question is then you probably cannot understand why people cannot fix things without applying their childish ideologies.

    People are fearful creatures, they will never break away from it and sadly yes... they can be ruled quite easily through that fear. Nothing you listed is a fear based ideology. They are all just ideologies, the fear comes from the humans participating in them and there is not a single ideology in existence free of fear's influence. In fact the very formation of a group identity is a fear based survival mechanic that is as natural as loving your own mother. There are fearful, ambivalent, and fearless people in every ideology. Problems arise when there is no balance between these persons.

  8. So, in other words... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Vietnam is catching up to the US in quelling dissent among it's population.

  9. Hate speech and crime defined by tepples · · Score: 2

    There's no such thing as "hate speech."

    Though I don't fully agree with Humpty Dumpty's claim in Carroll's Through the Looking Glass that a word means whatever the speaker wants, it's possible to give a useful definition for phrases like "hate speech". I'd define "hate speech" as speech that encourages hate crime, and in turn "hate crime" or "bias-motivated crime" is crime that targets a particular protected class of people.

    People should be free to express their opinions.

    I agree, though people should also keep it civil. Though I am unfamiliar with speech regulation in Vietnam, U.S. courts have ruled that libel and encouragement of imminent violence are not protected free speech. I'd like to see someone back up allegedly hateful claims about protected classes with facts.

  10. FSCK these repressive fascist countries! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    While I am not a fan of Fakebook, Fakebook, Google, etc... are not Vietnamese companies, therefore Vietnam cannot regulate them. Were I these companies, I would inform Vietnam that that my company's services will cease to be available in that country as of Dec 13, 2018 if this law is not repealed. That would also be my response to any similar laws in countries where I have no physical presence.

    1. Re:FSCK these repressive fascist countries! by sentiblue · · Score: 1

      Oh they can regulate FB/GG all right.... these companies have offices, servers in Vietnam. As long as they have a presence in this country, they have the right to regulate. But yes I agree with you that if the companies don't agree with the policy, they can pack up and leave.

    2. Re:FSCK these repressive fascist countries! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As the EU has demonstrated, they absolutely CAN regulate FB and Google, who are neither Vietnamese neither European companies. Yet EU regulation applies bcoz they do business there. So too, does Vietnamese regulation.

  11. But that requires reading and studying history by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

    US law enforcement and politicians should watch as these dictatorships use "harmless metadata" to round up groups of opposition members, to say nothing of mandated backdoors, to western police so they can add a notch in their belt, but to dictatorship enforcers, allowing the boot stepping on a human face, forever.

    --
    (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  12. Major items in the new laws by sentiblue · · Score: 1

    I'd like to let you guys know what the major items are in these new laws... FYI

    1. Facebook, Google and other global companies may exit Vietnam if they don't agree by Jan 1 2019
    2. Law enforcement can request private information about anyone
    3. Companies, when requested, must provide customer information to law enforcement
    4. Consumers will be denied internet services if found or suspected of "questionable" internet activities
    5. Online commerce will be prosecuted

  13. Re:gooooooooodbye vietnam! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Vietnam has about 90 million people with most of the population being under 30 and is one of the fastest growing economies on the planet.

    They might be commies, but they fucking hate the Chinese. China occupied Vietnam for 1,000 years and the Vietnamese fought many wars over centuries to drive them out.

  14. Re: How is it that that is such a global thing now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Have you anything to offer but useless personal attacks that don't even seem to match what you are quoting?

    Seriously, what was the point of your comment? Was your goal to actually convince anyone?

    I wish I could offer you counter-arguments, but I do not see anything resembling an argument, be it right or wrong.

  15. Guess who provides the tech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Give you a hint, it's not made in Vietnam.

    I am a bit perplexed by this though. There's nothing wrong with contries requiring local presence and the protests, according to the summary, were centered around "anti-chineese sentiment". Who gives a fuck? It's Vietnam not China.

    Unless I"m missing something else Vietnam has a very real reason to combat the propaganda from China.

  16. What they should do is this... by Harvey+Manfrenjenson · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Facebook, Google et al. should say: "This is the product we make. Our product is designed to have certain privacy safeguards in place, and we won't abide by your laws because it violates our company policy.* If this means our product is illegal to use in your country, then we're sorry, I guess people won't be using it in your country."

    The downside: they don't do business in Vietnam. How big a fucking deal is that? For companies of this size, not a very big deal, I'm guessing.

    The upside: They look like the good guys, and they get a huge amount of good publicity, for once.

    The other upside: Vietnam's government has just forbidden the entire population of Vietnam from using Google and Facebook-- popular products that they want to use, and that almost everyone else in the world gets to use. They're going to be pissed off. Royally. Maybe it becomes a lot harder for you to hold onto your political power.

    (*) Yes, yes, I know. Facebook and Google are both shitty companies that violate their own privacy policy all the time, both in ways that we know about and in ways that we don't. I have no illusions about that. Nonetheless, the blatant authoritarianism represented by this Vietnamese law is *even worse* than what we have to deal with in the US (IMO), and these companies can take a meaningful stand against it if they choose to do so.

    1. Re: What they should do is this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Big Brother Google and Creepy Facebook don't have privacy policies. They have ANTI-privacy polices.

  17. economic enhancement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Seems to me that Vietnam may have realized they can ride the privacy wave to generate income in their country by forcing Google to open a datacenter there in the interest of keeping native Vietnamese data on Vietnamese soil.

    Worried about the slippery slope... what happens when you need a server in every country you do business in and the laws are being passed solely to drive economic development to the detriment of smaller developers who lack the resources to house data in literally every country on earth?

    What happens when I move to Vietnam, and I fire up some multiplayer videogame... to meet the law they have to migrate my entire data profile to a Vietnamese server, so they'd probably have to check the IP I'm connecting from every time, maybe ask me if I've moved, migrate the data, and then get on with things. Trying to legislate where data is housed on systems accessed all over the world by stationary users and nomads alike seems like a nightmare.

    Yuck.

  18. Unfortunately... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...A series of tubes will not solve this problem.