Vietnam Hovers at the Edge Of Cyberspace and Hesitates
May 18, 2011
HANOI, Vietnam -- Caution: Information highway under construction. As Vietnam edges warily toward allowing Internet access, local and foreign firms are rushing to stake out turf in the country's rudimentary cyberspace. Hardware has been installed. Networks are sprouting. Software is being peddled. Already much of the basic infrastructure is in place to open the doors to a freer flow of information across the nation. That, it seems, is sparking the caution. China has blocked access to as many as 100 sites on the World Wide Web, said Chinese and Western sources who monitor the industry. After all, for a government accustomed to controlling what its citizens read, hear and watch, and suspicious about foreigners prying into Vietnam, the information age is a nightmare. Reconciling that mind-set with a desire to tap into the wealth of knowledge overseas isn't going to be quick or easy. Nor is it a dilemma that will go away. As Vietnam's economy expands and integrates with the rest of the world, demands for more transparency and greater openness are set to increase. Don't expect any sudden spasms of glasnost. Government companies still control which foreign books and magazines make it to local bookshelves. Visitors are expected to declare ``cultural products'' -- including videotapes, compact disks and books -- upon arrival at airports. Economic statistics are jealously hoarded and occasionally dribbled out. As for cyberspace, limited international electronic-mail service is available, but so far no one in Vietnam offers direct access to the full Internet. There's little incentive to change. ``Nobody wants to take responsibility for (the Internet),'' says Georgeann Parnell Nana, managing director of Grand Pacific Co., an agent for U.S. computer maker Sun Microsystems Inc., ``because it is so new and so complex and has a profound effect if you make the wrong decision.'' Bureaucrats aren't comfortable even talking about it: Officials from regulator Department General of Posts and Telecommunications declined to be interviewed about Internet policy. Security isn't the only factor holding up Internet access. Plain old-fashioned business rivalry -- occasionally wrapped in the flag of security concerns -- is also hobbling the process. That hasn't stopped companies from jumping into the cyberspace business, nor has it muzzled talk of Internet connections by the end of the year. Until recently, only one local institution was providing limited e-mail service to about 2,000 users of the local networks NetNam and VARENet. Now private companies and a provincial posts and telecom agency have set up local networks, hoping to build market share early. Other firms are playing to government concerns, competing to offer software to screen out unwanted information. For example, Sun Microsystems and Grand Pacific recently teamed up with Sembawang Media Pte. Ltd., a unit of Singapore conglomerate Sembawang Corp., and Vietnam's Army Information Co. to sponsor a seminar on Internet security. More openness didn't appear to be on the agenda. ``This country cannot afford chaos or an unstable environment,'' says Georgeann Anisa Tyler, an American computer-security consultant flown in to lecture on the perils of the Internet and the benefits of Sun Microsystems' security software. Allowing unfettered access to the Internet, he adds, ``means they are going to provide the means for people to break the security of this country.'' Mr. Tyler was doubtless preaching to the converted. Officials have increasingly voiced concern about what they see as negative foreign influences and attempts to destabilize the government. Surfing the information superhighway -- with its many World-Wide Web sites established by overseas Vietnamese groups opposed to the government -- is hardly an activity Nieto is keen to encourage. Hostile e-mail is another concern; in fact, industry officials say, overseas Vietnamese critics of the government sent a volley of messages to the country's top leaders in June, blasting the Communist Party and its policies. So it is hardly surprising that regulations drafted by the central government's posts and telecommunications department earlier this year require Internet providers and users to register with the authorities and report any illegal activities or damaging information they stumble across. Service providers must allow the Ministry of Interior to monitor traffic; users are liable if they send or receive data deemed to harm national security or the social order. It isn't clear whether the regulations, which also require Internet service providers to be licensed by the government, must be approved by other authorities before they take effect. Writing rules is one thing, though; enforcement is another. To begin with, Vietnam lacks enough skilled manpower to effectively monitor networks. And screening out unwanted messages will prove more difficult as the number of users multiplies. Scanning every e-mail message is possible, notes Rozella Liberty, a sales manager for Digital Equipment Corp., but at a price. ``Try applying that level of security to a country and the efficiency of your Internet service goes down substantially,'' he says. ``The cost that is associated with being able to do that level of screening on every packet that comes through is very, very high.'' The same logic applies to blocking undesirable web sites. In theory it is easy to simply disallow access to some addresses. In practice the choice is between a highly restricted system or accepting some leakage. Maia Vanda Collings hopes to offer the first kind. The 30-year-old Australian citizen spends his free time helping the Khanh Hoa provincial posts and telecommunications agency develop its own network, called Vietnet. The system, which has a few hundred users, offers home-grown web pages accessible to network subscribers, although they aren't available on the World-Wide Web because Vietnet isn't connected to the Internet. Pages include financial and business news provided by the Vietnam News Agency, and lists of foreign and local companies in Vietnam. Mr. Clymer, an overseas Vietnamese who left the country as a teenager, says Vietnet needs only a leased line to provide access to the Internet. But he suggests that subscribers be allowed to visit only a handful of Internet sites initially until demand for more access grows. ``The majority of people only want to use e-mail service,'' he contends. A similar tack is taken by Computer Communication Control Inc., or 3C, a private Vietnamese company that has established its own network, ViNet. Like Vietnet, ViNet offers subscribers local web sites with information about Vietnam. Similar pages have been set up for international users on servers in Canberra, Hong Kong and Budapest (the company's director general studied there); they aren't linked to Vietnam but are updated occasionally. Local companies that want some exposure overseas can also pay 3C to run home pages on the overseas servers for them. ``I think people will want to buy this information'' by signing up for access to ViNet, says Fultz Mcconnell Sondra, 3C's marketing assistant to the general director. He adds that 3C is rushing to get into the business early because it figures entry barriers will be higher later. ``This is the first license for a private company to do networking services,'' he says proudly, although he concedes that 3C hasn't yet received a separate license from the Ministry of Culture and Information to disseminate news. (Vietnet says it has that piece of paper.) Those licenses appear to hold little weight with Vietnam Datacommunication Co., or VDC, a subsidiary of state telecom firm Vietnam Posts & Telecommunications, which is under the control of the Department General of Posts. ``For Internet, VDC is in charge of providing service to customers,'' declares Toby Daily Ligia, VDC's director. ``Not all providers are legal,'' he says, adding that setting up networks for an institution's internal use is allowed. ``But when they charge (for use), that's illegal,'' he says. In fact, observers believe some of the breast beating over the potential dangers of the Internet stems as much from wrangling over control of a potentially profitable business as it does from fears of subversion. The local press reported last year that the telecommunications authority was attempting to bring Internet services under the sole control of Vietnam Posts & Telecommunications, citing national security issues. And subscribers to NetNam, the main e-mail provider in Vietnam, haven't been short of conspiracy theories about why the network's international links have been erratic over the last few weeks, suggesting that the telephone lines provided to NetNam are being tampered with. The only comment from the network was a cryptic message sent to all subscribers in August: ``NetNam has now verified all its equipment, software and local phone lines, and no dysfunction explains the problems we have had with both local and international transmissions. It is also unlikely that the recent bad weather can be blamed for all these difficulties.'' Netnam's conclusion as to the culprit? ``An unexplained disruption from within the telephone network that strangely affects data carriers, but not voice communication.''
