Vietnam shares a border with China, and it’s possible that Vietnamese authorities are starting to share the Chinese government’s low opinion of Google, too.  Today, a spokesperson dismissed Google’s claim that Vietnamese computer users were infected by politically motivated malware.

Google said it has detected malware targeting Vietnamese-language users opposed to bauxite mining in the Communist country.

The malware infected the computers of "potentially tens of thousands of users" who downloaded Vietnamese keyboard language software, Google Security Team member Neel Mehta wrote on the company’s security blog. The attacks targeted opposition to the mining of bauxite, an ore used to make aluminum.

The Committee to Protect Journalists is condemning the recent arrests of online journalists and political bloggers in Vietnam.

The crackdown comes as online journalists and bloggers independent reporting challenges Vietnam’s tightly censored state-run media’s monopoly on local news and opinion.

The National Archives along with Footnote.com have launched an online interactive Web site of the Vietnam War Memorial.

"The Wall is more than just 58,000 plus names. Many of these people were my friends," Vietnam veteran Richard Schroepfer says in a video on the site.

The idea of free speech and free press is perhaps one of the most dangerous threats to governments seeking to control the population. This is precisely what made the founders of the United States so revolutionary – the ability to share information allows the people to control the government, not the other way around.