This technology, which allows users to make digital phone calls over the Internet, has become popular with consumers worldwide because it's a cheap way to phone. But in communist Vietnam?where authorities have effectively blocked access to pro-democracy blogs and websites, and e-mails are presumed to be scanned?VoIP has also proven a relatively secure means of political networking. There, activists use VoIP to contact each other, take part in conference calls and live debates, and post recorded voice messages via online forums available on the websites of VoIP providers such as PalTalk, Yahoo! Messenger and Skype. "Skype is like a miracle," says Tran Khue, a 70-year-old Vietnamese dissident in Ho Chi Minh City. Khue, who recently got out of jail after serving 19 months for "abusing democratic rights," says he regularly conducts VoIP democracy forums and uses Skype to call sympathizers inside and outside Vietnam.
VoIP provides better cover than text-based communications because live conversations, when converted to digital bits for transmission on the Internet, are harder than e-mail to search for offensive words. Voice information is generally discarded once a call is over, while e-mail is stored indefinitely on servers, making it easier to trace the authors. Services like Skype also use encryption technology to scramble calls, so eavesdroppers can't decipher what's being said without a software "key" to decode the transmission. There's another benefit, too: in Vietnam's crowded Internet cafs, it's tough for police to discern which of the mass of headphone-wearing youths might be talking about democracy and which are simply online gamers or teens chatting innocuously.
VoIP providers, including Skype, declined to comment for this story. But the technology's spread has clearly revitalized a dying democracy movement. Five years ago, the number of Vietnamese dissidents had dwindled to a few dozen aging stalwarts, says Hanoi-based human-rights essayist Nguyen Thanh Giang, and they found it hard to organize or gather more than a dozen signatures for petitions. But when activists created a new umbrella organization?dubbed "8406 Group" because it was formed on April 8, 2006?they trumpeted it on VoIP forums and quickly got 2,000 members, many under the age of 30. "Voice chat has sped up the democracy process," says Giang. Says Julien Pain, head of the Internet Freedom Desk for the NGO Reporters Sans Frontires: "In Asia, Vietnamese dissidents seem to be even better than their neighbors at using this new tool."
But the authorities are fighting back, using such tactics as surveillance, infiltration and the cutting of suspected dissidents' Internet connections. Government officials won't comment on enforcement matters. But administration sources tell TIME that because they can't easily trace VoIP with technology, agents have joined and surreptitiously monitored VoIP chat rooms. Participants in antigovernment discussions use aliases, but agents try to lure them into revealing their true identities.
One snared dissident was Truong Quoc Huy, a 25-year-old mobile-phone repairman who says he first got interested in politics two years ago after stumbling upon a forum in which exiles and dissidents chatted using PalTalk. Huy began voicing his own opinions about corruption and democracy. But he says he was arrested last year and jailed for nine months, along with his brother Truong Quoc Tuan and a friend, after Huy revealed their identities to PalTalk members they thought were fellow democracy advocates; they now believe one may have been a police infiltrator. Within days of his release in July, Huy again started raising his voice online. He explained: "Vietnam doesn't have real democracy, so while I'm free I will continue to criticize."
On Aug. 18, a day after Huy last spoke with TIME, a dozen police swooped into a Ho Chi Minh City Internet caf and rearrested him. His brother, Tuan, thinks police followed him and Huy from their home to the caf. "Huy was chatting on PalTalk when a big man in a white shirt came up and grabbed him around the neck," says Tuan, who was also arrested but released a day later. "They handcuffed Huy, and took us to two separate police stations." Huy hasn't been heard from since.