- guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 26 June 2002 16.44 BST
The Vietnamese government is to spy on internet cafe customers to prevent them from accessing documents it considers politically and morally objectionable.
Increasing numbers of people in the Communist country having been using the internet and are able to see stark differences between reports in state-controlled media and foreign news.
The state-controlled Vietnam Economic Times newspaper reported the ministry of culture and information as saying the country now has 4,000 public internet cafes.
The ministry said: "No authorities have been responsible for monitoring the shops after their owners receive licenses, resulting in abuses."
The newspaper said young people could access pornographic material on the internet, but that the ministry was more worried about the spread of state secrets and "reactionary" documents.
The government there has already tightened controls on access to other types of information, including foreign television broadcasts, as the country opens up economically to the outside world.
Some Vietnamese people living abroad, as well as dissidents inside the country use the internet to circulate documents critical of the government. Although Vietnam's constitution provides for freedom of speech and the press, in practice both are restricted.
In March, a Vietnamese doctor, Pham Hong Son, was arrested for translating and circulating on the internet an article about democracy taken from a US state department internet site.
In February, a computer science lecturer, Lam Chi Quang, was detained for posting on the internet an essay critical of a border agreement signed with China in 1999. Critics say the agreement, which has never been released, favours China unfairly. Both men are still in detention.
Internet service providers in Vietnam are responsible for filtering websites that are considered undesirable, but the culture ministry said the large number of sites made that difficult.
In its report, it said internet cafe owners should be required to monitor customers to ensure they do not misuse the internet.
The Vietnam Financial Times reported on Monday that Prime Minister Phan Van Khai had ordered local authorities to inspect and assess all internet cafes and report back to the government by July 7.
Last week the prime minister issued a directive prohibiting all citizens, except for top Communist Party and government officials and a few others, from watching international satellite TV.
The party's top ideology official also instructed all newspapers to limit their coverage of a corruption scandal in which senior officials and dozens of police are accused of protecting a notorious underworld gang.
He said newspaper stories about the scandal had revealed state secrets and caused internal divisions - both of which are punishable by long prison terms.
