Legal Initiatives for VIETNAM co-director Trinh Huu Long was quoted on the 2018 Cyber-Security Law for From Grassroots Activism to Disinformation by Dien Luong.
- Title: Social Media’s Challenge to State Information Controls in Vietnam
- Publisher: ISEAS Publishing
Excerpt:
Commentators often equate Vietnam’s internet freedom as similar to China. Indeed, the West regularly includes Vietnam on its “state enemies of the internet” list, as it does for China, Iran, or Syria (Deutsche Welle 2013). There is some truth to the concerns of Vietnam looking towards China as a model, given how ideologically, politically and economically aligned Hanoi is with Beijing. Vietnam is embracing Chinese hardware and packages of security software to increase its technical and infrastructural capabilities for information controls (Sherman 2019). A prominent example to justify this observation is Vietnam’s passage and enforcement of the 2018 Cyber-Security Law, which bears striking resemblances to a similar Chinese law (Trinh Huu Long 2017) which gives the government carte blanche to strictly police the internet, scrutinize personal information, censor online discussion, and punish or even jail dissidents.