Vietnam Deploys Cyber Warriors to Fight ‘Wrongful Views'
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
They have some pretty strange policies here. I lived in Dalat, Vietnam for two years and went to an "illegal" Vietnamese language class. A teacher needs to have a license from Hanoi to teach Vietnamese to foreigners. And since it's apparently impossible to get a license, we were studying Vietnamese illegally. Eventually, the local police got wind of it and broke the class up. So all of the foreigners living here are essentially forbidden from learning how to communicate with the locals effectively. It's very bizarre.
The US will import about $50 billion worth of goods from Vietnam in 2017. That's up from $10 billion a decade ago.
That's equal to 25% of Vietnam's entire GDP.
It's also almost entirely one way, it's about as pure of a trade deficit as they get, so Vietnam is being doused with USD capital the same way China was in the early days of its growth boom. That's going to get a lot more dramatic yet, as the US wants some other large partners to work with in the region. For Vietnam's part, they seem perfectly happy to take the trade & capital inflow and put it to use rapidly expanding their economy.
Effectively, people will "block Facebook" from themselves through self-censorship or completely writing off Facebook as a "poisoned well."
While I think the internet provides amazing and revolutionary communications options to the human race, Facebook is quite clearly not among them.
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/call-appl...
It's a dangerous illusion of modernity that you can just pick up a "high quality" newspaper or watch the news and understand what is happening in the world. Or even in your own region.
One possible advantage of the total chaos of internet news is that the noise becomes so strong that we can't even receive the signal of traditional news sources with their "expert opinion" anymore.
If so... why?
But relying on social networks for news drops both careful research AND independent review, which is a step backward, not forward.
I don't trust what CNN says about Steve Bannon or Roy Moore, but just hearing what they say about themselves in their own words is enough for me to know I don't belong in their camp.
It is not enough to trust them to do their best. Journalists should be in a structure that strongly incentivizes telling the truth and strongly punishes false information. It is very unclear that US media outlets, almost all of which are highly politicized, have this property.
Really?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Rather#Killian_documents
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Williams#Iraq_War_helico...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_M._Thompson#Reporting_sca...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair#Plagiarism_and_fa...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lara_Logan#Benghazi_report_apo...
https://www.timeout.com/chicago/tv/how-a-horrible-decision-c...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Finkel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Glass#The_New_Republic
The CNN fish feeding story was deliberately created by zooming film at the point the Japanese leader dumped their fish food, then zooming out again to show Trump dumping his, then writing text to support the fake narrative.
The Mark Duggan 'unarmed' headline was immediately followed by a story which revealed the suspect was armed.
The retracted CNN Russia stuff might have simply have been gross incompetence though so your point does apply there.
Would the guardian be caught dead printing these? https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2016/08/17/breitbart-news-...
Or have they peddled lies as big as these ones? https://www.snopes.com/climatology-fraud-global-warming/ https://www.snopes.com/immigrants-california-wildfires/ https://www.snopes.com/planned-parenthood-satanists/
Look, maybe the media has a left bias. And it's plausible that right-leaning sources face more skepticism. That's not fair. But the reason Breitbart gets flack is because they really are that terrible.
But a lot of what also passes for quality journalism involves not news agencies but newspapers and magazines. I consider a lot of these to be just more sneaky versions of Breitbart. They are more subtle, use more sophisticated language, have specific formatting and typesetting, have a longer history and they mix up their activism with a broad spectrum of neutral news. (I'm mostly familiar with the press in my own country so it's hard to give widely recognizable examples.)
And of course, then there's publications like The Economist. In my very personal opinion, even though they may be "honest" in their intentions, they still end up giving their readers an illusion of understanding. You don't really know what happens in Iraq or Syria or China from reading the Economist. But it's so well written that you might end up believing you do.
Anyhow, I see enough reasons not to trust anyone who wants to use this fake news scare to punish their competition or to herd the population to the "proper" sources of information.
The untamed internet, when used properly as a source of information, will just give a snapshot of bewilderingly diverse points of view. Which is still not much, but so much better than the best polished story written by the best journalists.
Reading 20-year old "quality" news magazines makes me think so. Numerous personal experiences make me think so. Ads in quality newspapers and their subtle or not so subtle political affiliations make me think so.
Reality is extremely complex. Journalists, even when they are honest, neutral, capable and of good will, struggle with it. Especially when they try to come up with a polished story. I know this is the case for unimportant events happening nearby, so I assume it's especially true for complex, confusing situations in very different parts of the world.
Getting confused by reading totally different accounts of the same event, is what makes me smarter. Because this confusion accurately reflects reality. Getting confused happens to me way more often while reading the internet (or when talking to real people) than when reading The Economist.
For the record: I'm not condoning intentional disinformation. And I do want to know about important events.
The Vietnamese "cyber-army" in contrast seems to be a direct arm of the military, and the language in the articles appeared to be more military / aggressive oriented ("fight", "combating", etc.) with no mention in the articles regarding "freedom of expression" or other balancing factors.
At first glance, there doesn't appear to be a direct link to the policy initiative from the Vietnamese government, unlike the EU initiative. Though language barrier may be an issue here; I tried Googling lực 47 and didn't get much beyond other news articles and a Wiki entry, but perhaps there are better terms to use. Still, military policy tends to be more opaque in most nations overall, so it didn't surprise me to find no published government information about this initiative.
Typical EU-style communication. The word "balance" conjures up images of health, reason, yoga classes and whole grain breakfasts.
But in the end, it still represents a worldview of enlightened apparatchiks vs idiotic plebes. Why does there need to be a "balancing act" between freedom of information and anything else? When is something reliable or diverse or pluralistic?
Whether you think the EU will actually accomplish what they say, that's another story. My guess is, it is very likely that the process will be more transparent and allow more leeway, versus what is going on in Vietnam -- a single political party controlling opinion through opaque military concerns. All nations / parties / political philosophies produce propaganda and advocacy pieces, that is not news. Vietnam, however, has never been known for generous press freedom. In fact, it recently has been cracking down heavily on all opinion points that do not reflect the ruling party (https://www.economist.com/news/asia/21731192-american-indiff...).
I don't see an equivalent in the EU right now, to be honest. Once Western governments start arresting bloggers and journalists for having an opinion differing from the government like Vietnam is doing, let me know.
I can tell you this. We have multiple sources of news. Much more than ever existed before the internet came to our homes. I don't see how the EC can improve on this situation.
"a signal of intent to keep a degree of openness". How about a simple statement "the EC is not well-suited to determine whether fake news is a problem and, if so, how to deal with it". But I guess you'd need an ancient and strong tradition of popular democracy and hard-won constitutionalism to make such statements.
This is in spite of admissions they do not have enough resources to respond to property offenses.
"Any incident/crime which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person's race or perceived race"
or
"Any incident/crime which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice based on a person's religion or perceived religion."
"Any incident/crime which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person's race or perceived race"
or
"Any incident/crime which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice based on a person's religion or perceived religion."
Seems pretty sensible to me. From my perspective the UK laws and police are very pragmatic, it's probably illegal to say "death to the queen" but nobody would prosecute you for just those words. Now, if you where burning effegies of her and planning something then that's another matter.
Notice the and condition, it has to be threatening and intended to harass for example. Just causing someone distress without the intend to harass or threaten is not illegal, so someone feeling upset about what you said is perfectly fine. But if you said it to threaten them, and that's clear from your delivery or manner, then yeah it's not OK.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_the_Unit...
Prohibitions like this one are overly broad and smother a lot of legitimate discussion. Exceptions to free speech used to be limited to things like:
* Don't yell "fire" in a crowded theater.
* Don't call for violence.
If we broaden the scope to any speech someone, somewhere might take offense to, then we can no longer have much diversity of thought in public debates.
If these kind of "hate speech" laws existed in England in the 19th century, Charles Darwin would possibly never have published the book "Descent of Man", because saying "You and I both descend from animals" was a very demeaning thing to say to most people at the time, and therefore could have landed him in court. The very idea of biological evolution is still offensive to a lot of people today, BTW.
A stark warning that this concern is not a sterile theoretical exercise came in August this year, when James Damore was fired from Google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Ch...
So a company that champions and celebrates science to the outside world (like in their many doodles about scientists) and that has control over much of today's human communication, believes at the same time that it is a thoughtcrime to cite the scientific consensus about something as basic as biological differences between men and women.
These laws not only existed, they where far more stringent, prosecution far easier and the punishment far more severe. Try going back then and discussing the king/queen in a negative way.
And yet, his book was still published.
And in any case, he didn't say it to be threatening or abusive, so that's moot.
> A stark warning that this concern is not a sterile theoretical exercise
The HR policies of an American company (a country where in a lot of states you can be fired for any/no reason at all) is neither here nor there in a discussion about the UK's definition of hate crime, where that definition needs to be proven in a court of law to a jury of your peers at a trial.
Not every country adheres to such a fanatical stance on free speech as the USA, and yet seem to be doing just fine. Especially the UK, where there are restrictions on free speech. Sensible restrictions supported by the sensible population, who are not oddly terrified of their government.
True.
> And yet, his book was still published.
Because the subject of his book wasn't covered by these laws.
> And in any case, he didn't say it to be threatening or abusive, so that's moot.
Neither did Damore. He still got fired.
> The HR policies of an American company (a country where in a lot of states you can be fired for any/no reason at all) is neither here nor there in a discussion about the UK's definition of hate crime, where that definition needs to be proven in a court of law to a jury of your peers at a trial.
These HR policies are a sign of the times. The fashion of suppressing rational speech & thought in a misguided attempt to "protect" the minority-du-jour will eventually creep upwards into the laws of countries, as has already happened in Canada:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Act_to_amend_the_Canadian_H...
"Nothing in this Part shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents, or of any other belief system or the beliefs or practices of its adherents, or proselytising or urging adherents of a different religion or belief system to cease practising their religion or belief system. Subjective descriptions of a person's actions or behaviour, however abhorrent, crass or objectionable, may not be considered an attempt to spread hate unless the motive is clearly defined as such."
Certainly there are still going to be "grey incidents".
As far as I know, this is a really bad example. I don't think it even supports what you want to say, there is too much to this particular example and its history: https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
At the end of the day, 12 ordinary people came to the same conclusion, and so he is guilty. It's hardly the "big evil government cracking down on this nice man's (non existent) right to be racist".
Perhaps in a one on one situation it wouldn't be a crime, but doing infront of a thousand people is clearly very bad and distressing. Perhaps it's down to poor judgement, but that's not an excuse.
I'm also not in any way outraged by the outcome, but actually this was heard in a magistrates' court so there would be no jury involved.
> big evil government
Nah, it's kind of down to the whims of the individual judge. The wording of the statutes is pretty broad and vague, and in practice I think you inevitably have to rely on the individuals who comprise the legal system to not be terrible.
Right now I'd say that if people want to be outraged about the UK's legal system, they'd do better to direct their ire towards cuts in legal aid rather than "hate speech" laws (which have always existed in some form).
London it a multi-ethnic city and in order to stay peacefully that way the more extreme provocateurs of racial and religious hatred need to be silenced.
Some background: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmha... (caution, includes a couple of example offensive images)
Specifically one of London's black MPs, Dianne Abbott, recieves something like 40% of all online abuse directed at MPs. After the murder of Jo Cox by a far right extremist this stuff has to be taken seriously.
More context from the report: "The Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU) was set up in 2010 to remove unlawful terrorist material from the internet, with a focus on UK- based material. Twitter, which has been a magnet for jihadist propaganda, said that it had a close relationship with the CTIRU. 38 Google described CTIRU as a ‘trusted flagger’ with “an accuracy rate of around 80%”
So, Ms Abbott receives 40% of all online abuse directed at MPs. How many instances of abuse is that? Is it 300,000? Or is it 80 million?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/diane-abbott-i...
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3bg_SJKE9GOenpaekZ4eXRBWk0...
Seems to be based on sentiment analysis of about 900k tweets. From skimming:
> Five percent of all tweets mentioning Diane Abbott, @HackneyAbbott, are classified as abusive (8121 out of 140057).
Edit: Sorry. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2017
What is your comprehensive alternate?
The same has been happening in the US and plenty of other non-Communist countries, over here we just prefer calling it "War against terror" or "You broke the ToS!".
Try to go there and live for a few months, see for yourself.
By cowing to oppressive government demands, rather than support the side of the spectrum they were born on, Facebook and YouTube allow the middle to move towards oppression.
In the same way that you do not reward a child’s tantrum with their desired outcome, you do not demonstrate to the world that they can have both YouTube and oppressive governments; unless, of course, you’re more interested in brief-but-immediate comfort than extended-but-delayed happiness.
Facebook and YouTube are happy to push their political views, so long as the consequences don't interfere too much with cash flow. As a secondary effect, they're happy to let you believe they're nonprofit-minded with profitable products -- and that's also good for business, as demonstrated in the negative by late-90s era Microsoft.
Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, all heavy handed as regards the Internet. Russia, China, most of the former Balkan states, Turkey... Brazil, even.
When I say enable, I am talking about stateless nonprofits creating platforms where people can communicate freely, express themselves freely, and if they need to - organize protests to protect their freedoms. Things like Signal are great steps toward it, but we need more.
It's clearly not a technical problem, so it's foolish to try to find a technical solution. This kind of silicon valley elitist Tellerism is doing more harm than good in cases like these.
Someone in Dalat could teach Vietnamese to any number of foreigners, without any adversary being the wiser. Anyone in China could read up on Tiannenmen Square or the “Free Tibet” movement without fear of arrest. People in Indonesia could watch any film they wish.
“Laws” in any country on this planet are not immutable, immaculate/divine, absolute, or axiomatic. They can and should be changed — regardless of the concerns of those in power. And the only reliable way to ensure change is education, information and discussion — all unfettered, uncensored and unbridled.
Until technology guarantees that, we as ‘techies’ have not delivered. And please, don’t tell me about Tor and “teh darkwubs” — that is not a realistic solution for 99% of the online population — too slow and still not bulletproof.
Technology needs to do better.
As for tor and the dark web, more important than being fast & solid is ease of use. If we design platforms, protocols, etc by default to be censorship free, then many projects to fill gaps will follow. Tor was an attempt, but failed at widespread adoption, maybe we need something smaller to begin with. E2E encrypted chat apps was a good first step, we need more.
We take many things here in the US for granted. When I go back to my home country, I feel odd sense of insecurity, now imagine people living there for their whole lives - they take censorship as normal and go with it. With censorship comes with censored imaginations, research and so on.
Any system sufficiently user-friendly to be accessible to the bulk of the global populace is also user-friendly to government authority. Because inevitably, passwords get misplaced and authentication / authorization tokens get forgotten or stolen, and then the average user needs an authority to turn to to re-establish their connection to the network.
Similarly, if internet was designed with privacy in mind, things would have been different. If your favorite news site were available through tor, and you were using nontracking browser, you'd probably be fine.
thought not many people want to believe that, China has very strong political influence in Vietnam
It’s a very complex and mildly antagonistic relationship while, yes, also having strong cultural and political influence.
Your characterization is incredibly broad however and - taken as written - quite inaccurate
That's what im' trying to say as well
But yeah, culturally speaking there’s a great animosity that’s true (while having strong ties as well, it’s a dichotomy)
All large companies execute some level of censorship and all countries have standards of decorum. The question is really how much censorship one tolerates, not whether any at all is tolerable.
If the government had the monopoly of the media they wouldn't have to have "operations to influence media from agencies".
If anti-net-neutrality of the media there wouldn't be "millions of fake anti-net-neutrality messages".
Do you want to try to set up an anti-corruption FB account in Vietnam and see what happen?
I feel like this isn't really true; Taiwan, and arguably South Korea have more liberal societies and governments.