Furthermore, companies must officially register all user names. The language is ambiguous enough that whoever is monitoring the Internet can do something nasty to you if they want to. In the past, Vietnam has treated dissidents harshly, Turley adds, so surfers had best beware.
Vietnamese bureaucrats are more sanguine than the critics.
He adds that the government should have no problem ensuring the purity of whatever content is accessed. The good news is that those censors have failed to interfere with the use of email. The government has found it impractical to monitor the content of email messages, particularly given the growing volume, says David Marr, professor at Australian National University's School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Meanwhile, access to email continues to grow now that a handful of restaurants and private computer stores in Saigon offer dirt-cheap deals to send or retrieve messages. Outside observers doubt that there will be widespread Internet access for many months, citing high prices, a dearth of modems, and limited bandwidth.