FYI
ps 
King Sihamoni's "Cambodian Ambassador" are Vietnamese.  Mme Sin Serey to 
Singapore  IS A VIETNAMESE Khieu Thavika to Russia IS A VIETNAMESE Chea Von to 
Geneva  IS A VIETNAMESE Lim Sam Kol to S.Korea  IS A VIETNAMESE UCh Kim An to 
France  IS A VIETNAMESE 
Vietnam is condemned at the United Nations:Oct. 21, 1986 The UN General 
Assembly adopted a resolution A/RES/41/6, by vote of 116-21 with 13 
abstentions, calling for a withdrawal of Vietnamese forces from Cambodia.




Subject: RFA News: Vietnam To Police Blogs With Random Checks, 
Self-ReportingDate: Wed, 10 Dec 2008 09:16:27 -0500From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]





 

Vietnam To Police Blogs With Random Checks, Self-Reporting
 
Also on www.rfa.org:
North Korean Prison Memoir Paints Grim Picture 
www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/book-11162008180959.html/extracts-11192008085805.html
Korean Leaflet War Escalates 
www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/korea-12092008081506.html
 
BANGKOK—Vietnamese authorities plan to police the content of dissident blogs 
through random checks and self-policing by the country’s blogging community, a 
senior Vietnamese Internet security expert has told Radio Free Asia (RFA)
 
“There should be a legal corridor to assure better operation of the blogs,” the 
director of the state-run Bach Khoa Internet Security Center, Nguyen Tu Quang, 
told RFA’s Vietnamese service. “We’ll manage them by randomly checking—we don’t 
need to control all the blogs.”
 
“When we create a legal corridor, determining what is legal and what is a 
violation of Vietnamese law, the blog community will detect such things on its 
own and will let the government know of violations,” Quang said.
 
Earlier this month, Information and Communication Deputy Minister Do Quy Doan 
was quoted as saying Hanoi would seek cooperation from Internet giants Google 
and Yahoo! to help "regulate" the country's flourishing blogging scene.
 
The government will soon announce new rules, stressing that Weblogs should 
serve as personal online diaries and not organs to disseminate opinions about 
politics, religion, and society, senior officials were quoted as saying.
 
The regulations aim "to create a legal base for bloggers and related agencies 
to tackle violations in the area of blogging," said Information and 
Communication Deputy Minister Do Quy Doan, according to the official Thanh Nien 
daily.
 
The ministry "will contact Google and Yahoo! for cooperation in creating the 
best and the healthiest environment for bloggers," he added.
 
Quang, speaking in a telephone interview, said getting help from Google and 
Yahoo! would be helpful but not critical. “Our effort to detect blogs will be 
more convenient if we can get help from the Internet companies,” he said, but 
added: “We can detect blogs without help from Internet companies.”
 
Quang said under the draft rules being debated violators could face up to U.S. 
$12,000 in fines and up to 12 years of jail time.
 
Wary of online content
 
According to recent government figures, nearly one in four Vietnamese use the 
Internet. Activity in Vietnam’s blogosphere has recently increased and Hanoi is 
becoming more wary of online content it considers politically threatening.
 
Authorities currently block some Web sites run by overseas Vietnamese that 
espouse views critical of the government, and they often seek to shut down 
anything seen as encouraging public protest.
 
In September, blogger Dieu Cay was jailed for 2-1/2 years on tax evasion 
charges after he tried to persuade people to protest at the Olympic torch 
ceremonies in Ho Chi Minh City last summer.
 
Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom monitoring group, called on 
authorities to release the cyber-dissident, whose real name is Nguyen Hoang 
Hai, and said that he was being unjustly targeted because of his outspoken 
criticism of China's claims over disputed South China Sea islands.
 
Vietnam’s government is also extremely cautious of internal issues that could 
anger its northern neighbor.
 
Abide by local laws
 
Robert Boorstin, director of policy communications at Google, said his company 
hadn't been contacted with a specific request from the Vietnamese government 
but is aware of the plans to further regulate bloggers in the country.
 
“We believe that blogs are an expression of a person’s personal opinions, 
whether those opinions concern culture, art, their daily life, or 
politics—whatever they want to talk about. We don’t censor based on the content 
of blogs and would not want to do so,” Boorstin said.
 
Boorstin said Google censors “a great deal less” than other search engines 
around the world, but he added, "If we don’t abide by local laws, we will be 
thrown out” of certain countries.
 
He said that Google’s policy in China, where authorities restrict much of what 
may be accessed by netizens, is to filter results from its search engine 
according to local laws, but to clearly show users that results are blocked.
 
Google also refuses to offer its email or blogging service in China because 
this would force the company to operate servers within the country from which 
authorities could request personal information about users.
 
“That is the kind of place where we draw the line and say ‘No, we’re not going 
to venture into those kinds of services because the risk to individual freedom 
and the risk to our users’ privacy is too great,’” Boorstin said.
 
“We push the limits as far as we can push them without being told to pack up 
our bags and leave the country, because we don’t want to leave countries where 
we’re providing a service of information to people. It may not be every single 
piece of information that we want them to have, but much better they have 
access to huge new quantities of information than the other choice, which is to 
show them nothing at all.”
 
Original reporting by Mac Lam and Thien Gao for RFA’s Vietnamese service. 
Vietnamese service director: Diem Nguyen. Executive producer: Susan Lavery. 
Written for the Web in English by Joshua Lipes and Sarah Jackson-Han.
 
Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation broadcasting and publishing 
online news, information, and commentary in nine East Asian languages to 
listeners who do not have access to full and free news media. RFA’s broadcasts 
seek to promote the rights of freedom of opinion and expression, including the 
freedom to “seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media 
and regardless of frontiers.” RFA is funded by an annual grant from the 
Broadcasting Board of Governors. 

 
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