The Vietnamese Parliament has passed its new Cyber Security Law on June 12, 2018 with overwhelming votes. The law has been in effect from January 1, 2019.
The law has seven chapters and 43 articles. It sets out responsibilities for the actions of relevant agencies, organizations and individuals to safeguard “national security” and “social order”. The key points of the law are set out below:
(i) Domestic and foreign companies that provide network-related services in Vietnam must have a user information stored in the territory of Vietnam.
(ii) Foreign companies providing Internet-related services in Vietnam need to establish offices in Vietnam.
(3) Domestic and foreign companies who provide network-related services in Vietnam are required to verify user registration information; they also need to provide the legal enforcement agencies with users’ information.
(4) Provisions on prohibiting the use of cyberspace to incite opposition to the state, distort the history, undermine the national unity, defame religion, or spread false and indecent information.
While Vietnam is also a Socialist country, its people enjoys relatively higher freedom of internet access than that of China. Social media like Facebook and Twitter are generally not blocked. In fact, Vietnam ranks the 7th largest population of Facebook users among all countries.
