Category Archives: Vietnam

#IMWeekly: December 2, 2013

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Canada
Documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that Canada allowed the US National Security Agency to conduct widespread surveillance during the G8 and G20 summits that were held in Toronto in 2010. It is unclear who the specific targets of the surveillance operation were. Both US and Canadian officials declined to comment on the new revelations.

Netherlands
A seven-month investigation by the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) found that Google’s policy of combining personal data from the various online services that it provides violates Dutch data protection law. The DPA’s recent conclusions are based in part a new privacy policy that Google introduced in March 2012 and implemented, according to the DPA, without adequately informing users about what it would be collecting and why. The same policy is under investigation in five other European states: France, Spain, Germany, Italy, and Britain.

South Africa
South African President Jacob Zuma signed a Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Bill into law. According to a statement issued by a presidential spokesman, “The act will give effect to the right to privacy, by introducing measures to ensure that the personal information of an individual is safeguarded when it is processed by responsible parties.” The new POPI law is designed to protect consumers’ right to privacy while not overly burdening online businesses and entrepreneurs who seek to legitimately use their customers’ personal information to provide better services.

Vietnam
The Vietnamese government issued two new decrees that create new fines for various offenses related to e-commerce and social media. The full impact of the decrees remains to be seen. Critics fear, however, that the new commerce fines place undue restrictions on young e-commerce sites. Activists are also concerned that the new social media fines, which penalize “propaganda against the state” and expressions of “radical ideology”, could be used to further suppress online activity and activism.

#imweekly is a regular round-up of news about Internet content controls and activity around the world. To subscribe via RSS, click here.

#IMWeekly: November 18, 2013

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Iran
A study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication surveyed over 800,000 Persian-language Wikipedia articles in order to better understand how the Iranian government censors the Internet. Censored articles (963 in total were found to be blocked) covered a wide range of content—from human rights issues to sexual topics—with a particular attention given to information about individuals and/or groups that have expressed opposition to the state.

United States
Critics of the FISA Improvements Act, a new Senate bill described by supporters as surveillance reform, argued that the bill would not only “make permanent a loophole permitting the NSA to search for Americans’ identifying information without a warrant” but also that it “contains an ambiguity that might allow the FBI, the DEA and other law enforcement agencies to do the same thing.” While the fifteen member Senate Intelligence Committee voted 11-4 to approve the legislation on October 31, a recently released committee report reveals that the members of the committee were sharply split on a number of proposed amendments that would have imposed stricter reforms.

Vietnam
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) created a petition calling on the Vietnamese government to release imprisoned blogger Nguyen Van Hai. Hai was convicted under a vague law that bars “conducting propaganda” for writing blog posts on sensitive political topics. He is currently serving a twelve-year sentence.

#imweekly is a regular round-up of news about Internet content controls and activity around the world. To subscribe via RSS, click here.

#IMWeekly: October 7, 2013

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Iran
Iranian president Hassan Rouhani chatted about Internet censorship with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey last week. The medium for their conversation? Twitter itself, which is blocked in Iran. Dorsey launched the conversation by asking Rouhani if Iranian citizens were able to read his tweets. Rouhani responded by claiming that he intends to “ensure my ppl’ll comfortably b able 2 access all info globally as is their #right,” potentially signaling a move toward greater Internet freedom in the country.

Russia
According to documents collected by Russian journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, Russia plans to monitor both the phone and Internet communications of Olympic competitors and spectators in February.

Vietnam
Dissident blogger Le Quoc Quan was sentenced to 30 months in prison and a $59,000 fine last Wednesday. Quan was arrested last December after criticizing the role of the Communist Party in Vietnam’s leadership; he was charged with tax evasion.

#imweekly is a regular round-up of news about Internet content controls and activity around the world. To subscribe via RSS, click here.

#IMWeekly: September 16, 2013

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China
Chinese Internet users, worried about the implications of the country’s new anti-online rumor policy, are scrambling to “un-verify” their Weibo accounts. The new policy, part of a judicial decision made earlier this month, allows Chinese Internet users to be charged with defamation (and sentenced to up to 3 years in jail) if they post a rumor online that is reposted more than 500 times or visited more than 5000 times. Weibo users with verified accounts—which indicate that the user, generally a celebrity, is who he or she claims to be—are asking the microblogging site to remove their verified status in the hopes that this might prevent them from being as easily identified (and potentially charged with defamation) online.

Germany
More than 20,000 people gathered in Berlin earlier this month to protest against surveillance. Protestors at Freiheit Statt Angst (Freedom Not Fear), organized by a coalition of human rights organizations, political parties, and NGOs, spoke out against the effects of surveillance on press freedom and human rights, among other issues.

Vietnam
Activist Ngo Hao has been sentenced to 15 years in prison on charges of publishing false and defaming information about government officials online and of trying to overthrow the government. Hao is one of at least 35 bloggers and cyberdissidents currently detained in Vietnam.

#imweekly is a regular round-up of news about Internet content controls and activity around the world. To subscribe via RSS, click here.

#IMWeekly: September 9, 2013

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United States
More news about PRISM broke last week: according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the NSA has either circumvented or broken most commonly used encryption systems. This affects both financial and medical data as well as the contents of emails, chats, and other online communications. The Guardian reports that Hotmail, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook, among other service providers, may be affected.

United States
Following close on Facebook’s heels, Yahoo! released its first-ever transparency report last week. The report covers government data requests from 17 countries, and discloses the total number of requests, the number of user accounts specified in those requests, and the number of requests for which Yahoo! disclosed both content and non-content data, among other statistics.

Vietnam
Earlier this summer, Vietnam’s prime minister approved “Decree 72,” which prohibits blogs and social media sites from “‘quote[ing]’, ‘gather[ing]’ or summariz[ing] information from press organizations or government websites.” The decree, which effectively outlaws political discussion online, took effect on September 1.

#imweekly is a regular round-up of news about Internet content controls and activity around the world. To subscribe via RSS, click here.