Vietnam's Force 47 is run by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) to hack anti-government websites and spread pro-government messages online, and is believed to be at least 10,000-strong.
Anh Chi, the pen name of 46-year-old Nguyen Chi Tuyen, knows the ministry's tactics well. He has created videos criticising Force 47, and has expressed concern about the impact of a new cyber-law that came into effect at the beginning of the month.
The deadly January 9 incident in Dong Tam is a case in point.
According to the authorities, three police officers and 84-year-old village leader Le Dinh Kinh were killed after local residents clashed with police in the early hours of that day.
The dispute, over agricultural land next to a military airport, shocked the country. But afterwards, Vietnam's cyber-army, also known as Force 47, was deployed to counter the content on social media platforms deemed critical of the way the authorities handled the situation.
"Facebook is the main source of independent news now in Vietnam," said Trinh Huu Long, a co-founder of Legal Initiatives for Vietnam.
"The government has been working with Facebook to try to control content posted by dissidents and independent voices," he added.
Vietnam is said to be following China's lead in policing its citizens speech online. Is this going to become the global norm?
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The Biden administration on Tuesday warned the nation's governors that drinking water and wastewater utilities in their states are facing "disabling cyberattacks" by hostile foreign nations that are targeting mission-critical plant operations.
"Disabling cyberattacks are striking water and wastewater systems throughout the United States," Jake Sullivan, assistant to the president for National Security Affairs, and Michael S. Regan, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, wrote in a letter. "These attacks have the potential to disrupt the critical lifeline of clean and safe drinking water, as well as impose significant costs on affected communities."
[...] The letter extended an invitation for secretaries of each state's governor to attend a meeting to discuss better securing the water sector's critical infrastructure. It also announced that the EPA is forming a Water Sector Cybersecurity Task Force to identify vulnerabilities in water systems. The virtual meeting will take place on Thursday.
"EPA and NSC take these threats very seriously and will continue to partner with state environmental, health, and homeland security leaders to address the pervasive and challenging risk of cyberattacks on water systems," Regan said in a separate statement.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday January 17 2020, @10:47PM (18 children)
Yes, yes it is. And in nations that pretend to be ruled by the people it will be initially introduced in the guise of Hate Speech and other feel-good censorship. The government doesn't have to police you if they can get others to inform on you because you're Bad or if they can get you to censor yourself for them. You'll be just as silent though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @11:16PM (4 children)
Not even touching on the fact that Vietnam is a Communist dictatorship that has to spend state resources on preventing any regular person gaining power.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @11:29PM (3 children)
Aaaah, I see.
Communist dictatorship. This happens in communist dictatorships, not elsewhere.
You have cast a great white light upon the matter to the ineffable enrichment of us all.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @12:39AM
Hey! SN is looking for fresh editors, right? Vietnam might be a good place to search!
#FreeAristarchus!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @03:24AM (1 child)
And as everyone knows, the solution to communist oppression is right wing fascism. Onward march!
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @02:57PM
Nah it's more communism, this time it'll work we promise
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday January 18 2020, @01:03AM (10 children)
Spot on. Along with calls to refuse service to anyone who isn't "politically correct", red flag laws, gun confiscation, etc ad nauseum. The modern electronics age isn't all that different from ages past.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @03:11AM (4 children)
Discrimination based on political leanings will go to court and get ruled against. But as usual you are just conflsting refusal of service to an individual with political prejudice. Would be interesting to dig back to the bakers who wouldn't make a gay cake, I have the feeling you were defending their right to free association instesd of condemning their discrimination.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @03:21AM (1 child)
We can have red flag laws against racists, black people, drug addicts, conspiracy theorists and other anti-social undesirables, what's your point even?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @08:30AM
Uhhhh, just to be clear, in the United States, so-called "red flag laws" are a form of gun control which is designed to deprive legal gun owners of their right to own weapons. In a messy divorce, this will be a new revenge thing. Tell the cops that you're afraid your ex might shoot you, and they'll happily destroy his home in the search for weapons, and confiscate everything they find, no matter how trashy or how valuable. And, THERE IS NO DUE PROCESS!!
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Saturday January 18 2020, @06:06AM
Depends on who drives the discrimination. The US government (and all state governments) can't so discriminate, even by proxy. Keep in mind here that it's way too easy to do quid pro quo deals where a business provides such censorship in exchange for some of the many benefits a powerful government can provide. Those are just as illegal as if the US government discriminated directly.
It also depends on the conditions of the services provided. If the service provider is promising open communities or honoring free speech (which incidentally is an issue with almost all US universities), for example, then such discrimination may well be a case of false advertising or even a contract violation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @03:56PM
There's a big nuance in that gay cake case that most don't understand.
It had nothing to do with whether or not you can refuse service to gays - you cannot. However, you also cannot be forced to engage in an expression that you disagree with. Imagine political views were a protected class to make this clear. And now imagine I go to Liberal Lisa's Commissioned Art Shop and ask her to paint something showing Trump as an awesome person. She could disagree because her right of protection against forced expression trumps the right of you to impose your will on her just because you're advocating for a protected class.
So the question the case was answering was, 'Are wedding cakes a form of artistic expression, or a normal commodity?' And no, 'expression' is not just a casual loophole to bypass all our little laws. It's pretty well defined and that wedding cakes were even a question shows how stringently it's interpreted. Wedding cake folks do style themselves as artists and customers pay a massive premium exclusively because it is generally seen as art. It's certainly not a normal commodity, yet the burden of proving it was an artistic expression was nonetheless left on the baker.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @03:26AM (4 children)
Any yet those opposed to "political correctness" are the ones who end up putting people in concentration camps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @03:59AM
Do you mean re-education camps where inmates earn a living wage? Concentration camp is so politically incorrect.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @09:04AM (1 child)
That would be Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, and some lesser socialist big names, along with some great Turkish examples, and let us not forget Hitler, the National Socialist. Yes, we can agree that socialist agendas are to be feared.
(Score: 2) by dry on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:58PM
Are they the ones who put the American Indians in re-education schools? Perhaps the ones who enslaved whoever they could?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @04:42PM
Yes folks like Hitler, Mao, and Stalin were all well known for their warm embrace of free expression among their populations...
There's a good old USSR joke. Roosevelt says to Stalin, One great thing about America is that we have Freedom of Speech. Anybody could stand right in front of the White House, say "Roosevelt is a piece of shit" and nobody would care. Stalin responds, "Ah! Well we have freedom of speech in the USSR too. Anybody could stand right in front of the Kremlin, say "Roosevelt" is a piece of shit", and nobody would care at all!
What do you think political correctness is about? It's control. It's used to try to push political agendas by controlling what is said. This is not just a leftist thing either. For instance in the 80s the right was hardcore into political correctness. And anything that went against the platform would be condemned as being 'against family values'. In modern times the left has gone for kind of unhinged corporate globalism. In this world Islamic migrants are a big target. Hence the decision to start labeling any critique whatsoever against Islam is Islamophobia because, you know, there's absolutely no genuine critiques against Islam whatsoever. Same thing with stuff like relabeling illegal immigrant to 'undocumented migrants'. It's an effort to change language itself to try to breed support for a political ideology.
Needless to say, yes the folks who go on to do really nasty stuff tend to be huge fans of political correctness.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @03:08AM (1 child)
Somehow I don't think I'll lose sleep over hate speech laws. Richard Spencer(?) the KKK asshole is still proselytizing his hatred quite successfully. Wake me up when there is something beyond your paranoia to worry about.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 20 2020, @01:37PM
You should. That's how loss of liberty generally works. First they come for the scoundrels, then they start broadening the definition of "scoundrel". Any power you cede to the government will never come back to you without bloodshed and any power the government has it will abuse.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @11:28PM
yes
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @11:44PM
President Warren will ensure that it doesn't happen in the USA, as soon as she finishes the laundry.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @12:31AM (6 children)
The US military paid for video games with pro US military themes.
The US military provides access to their equipment (e.g., ships), in exchange for pro US military messages in movies.
When a pro-torture tv show showed up while the US was illegally torturing poor innocent slobs (who were sold to the US for sums that averaged 4-5 years worth of pay for the Afghans doing the selling [and fetched prices of approximately 40yrs Afgan income for a few, unlucky, multi-lingual foreigners who were in the wrong place at the wrong time]; nearly all prisoners of Guantanamo were "acquired" this way), you can bet money/favors exchanged hands from the US gov't to Hollywood.
The difference is that the Vietnamese version of the propaganda program costs a lot less to run.
CIA Director William Casey (during the Reagan administration) said, "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." This, apparently, is still the benchmark our rulers are using.
https://www.quora.com/Did-CIA-Director-William-Casey-really-say-Well-know-our-disinformation-program-is-complete-when-everything-the-American-public-believes-is-false [quora.com]
For the binary thinkers reading this, no what Vietnam is doing is not OK because the US does the equivalent. Both are shitty, and a sign that the rulers and their policies lack the legitimacy they claim.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Saturday January 18 2020, @03:55AM (5 children)
This binary thinker thinks you just gave a great example of whataboutism. The US military does some minor things to get better propaganda from US media (the first two items that weren't "you can bet" uninformed speculation) is nothing like Vietnam's massive propaganda/censorship/harassment operation.
And is more effective particularly when coupled with Vietnam's ability to punish dissidents and their families with fines, jail time, etc.
It's completely dishonest to make these slanted comparisons. Sure, there might come a future when the US does things that make this Vietnamese stuff look tame in comparison. But it hasn't happened yet. In the meantime, we're normalizing this sort of bad behavior (and perhaps making that above future more likely!) by claiming that some minor thing is equivalent to what Vietnam is doing now.
After all, what is the point of criticizing the US when someone else does wrong? (particularly a much worse wrong!) How does that help fix the wrongdoing? Are we only supposed to fix the wrongs of the world once the US is perfect?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @05:08AM (1 child)
Hmmmm.... you say,
>After all, what is the point of criticizing the US when someone else does wrong? (particularly a much worse wrong!) How does that help fix the wrongdoing? Are we only supposed to fix the wrongs of the world once the US is perfect?
GP you are responding to, said,
>>For the binary thinkers reading this, no what Vietnam is doing is not OK because the US does the equivalent. Both are shitty, and a sign that the rulers and their policies lack the legitimacy they claim.
Do you notice your reading comprehension fail?
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Saturday January 18 2020, @05:56AM
Nope and you didn't either. Let us keep in mind that this story wouldn't exist in the first place, if what was said or written was always true.
Here, I see this as a typical attempt to defuse counterargument by anticipating it. And aside from paying lip service via the above claim what really do they do to support that claim? A feeble argument equating serious wrongdoing and speech suppression on Vietnam's part with some lightweight publicity on the US military's side. Perhaps, they believe what they wrote above, but the previous words don't match that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Coward, Anonymous on Saturday January 18 2020, @08:56AM (2 children)
US kids are made to chant government propaganda every morning at school. Those who refuse are often punished. That is not a "minor thing".
In politics, people often care most about what they can change the least. It's reasonable to draw their attention to things they can affect.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Saturday January 18 2020, @01:04PM
Right. Just keep digging that hole deeper.
Hypothetically, like the world's ending from global warming, but you can use cloth diapers instead of disposable?
(Score: 3, Funny) by hendrikboom on Saturday January 18 2020, @09:22PM
And also foreign kids who happen to be visiting the US for a year and are enrolled in US schools.
Maybe not officially, but what 10-year-old wants to stand out by refusing to say the oath allegiance to the US because she's unamerican?
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Saturday January 18 2020, @12:57AM
"If we want your opinion, we'll tell it to you."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @02:06AM (2 children)
They've got a whole army of blue check marks. This is the norm everywhere variously backed by law. You can even see it action: https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/ed2mlx/with_the_democrat_debate_tonight_lets_all_recall/ [reddit.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @03:13AM
The Techno Union army is at your disposal
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @01:08PM
it's ok when democrats do it, it's all for black people and the poor after all