New Study of Vietnam’s Internet Censorship

For those who want to argue that the U.S. letting Vietnam’s ruling class continue to fill its pockets by Vietnam’s entry to the World Trade Organization, the reality is that it just entrenches Vietnam’s rulers oppression. The Open Net Initiative has issued its latest country study, on Vietnam:

… The technical sophistication, breadth, and effectiveness of Vietnam's filtering are increasing with time, and are augmented by an ever-expanding set of legal regulations and prohibitions that govern on-line activity. Vietnam purports to prevent access to Internet sites primarily to safeguard against obscene or sexually explicit content. However, the state's actual motives are far more pragmatic: while it does not block any of the pornographic sites ONI tested, it filters a significant fraction (in some cases, the great majority) of sites with politically or religiously sensitive material that could undermine Vietnam's one-party system. Vietnam's Internet infrastructure and market are dynamic and fast-changing, but it seems inescapable that the state's on-line information control will deepen and grow.

Vietnam focuses particular effort on blocking access to sites related to topics that challenge the state's political orthodoxy, such as those treating political dissidents, political democracy, or the proposed Vietnam Human Rights Act in the United States Congress. Sites on topics related to domestic religious faiths, such as Buddhism and Caodai, are also subject to blocking, though less extensively. In nearly all cases, sites in the Vietnamese language are far more likely to be blocked than sites in the English or French languages.

Western businessmen are profiteers at the Vietnamese peoples' cost, and politicians -- from George Bush to John Kerry -- for various reasons either agree with the businessmen, or don't care. Along with the Chinese, who are betrayed by Western Internet companies' willing censorship, the United States is seeding future generations and leaders' resentment and distruct of the U.S.