Legal Initiatives for VIETNAM and it’s co-director Trinh Huu Long were acknowledged as report authors for Freedom on the Net 2021, an annual survey and analysis of internet freedom around the world.
Freedom on the Net is a collaborative effort between Freedom House staff and a network of more than 80 researchers, who come from civil society organizations, academia, journalism, and other backgrounds, covering 70 countries.
Title: Freedom On The Net 2021
Publish Date: September 16, 2021
Publisher: Freedom House
Excerpt:
Data sovereignty as an excuse for surveillance
A draft decree released in February 2021, as part of the implementation of Vietnam’s Cybersecurity Law, expands requirements for large and small online platforms to store data on Vietnamese servers, including users’ names, birth dates, nationality, identity cards, credit card numbers, biometric files, and health records. Authorities can access user data under vaguely defined pretexts related to national security and public order. Full compliance with Vietnamese law by social media companies would put activists, journalists, and human rights defenders at risk, given the one-party regime’s harsh suppression of perceived political dissent.
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