My nephew, planning an extended jaunt through Vietnam, applied for a visa. What he received horrified him. A bilingual letter authorized his entry and instructed him to pick up his visa upon arrival at Da Nang International Airport.

My nephew’s name was on an attached list, among a dozen other citizens of the world, displaying each person’s full name, date of birth, nationality, and passport number.

Is this the standard practice of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam? Group visa approvals of unrelated travelers… Information-sharing on a broad and arbitrary scale.

My outraged nephew said he would not have visited Vietnam if he’d known how visas were issued. I’ve blurred the data, but here’s what the list looked like: