THE LAND OF I KNOW NOT WHAT AND I KNOW NOT WHERE

activity going on in Russia at the time that maybe even the fabled SORM-2 was having a hard time keeping up with everything. Who can say? Because one thing that the attack on Estonia made quite clear was that you can make a very shrewd guess as to who has instigated events like these, but you cannot ever be certain.

Like all governments, the Russian government was evolving its own unique attitude towards the Internet, its function and the relationship between the state and the end user. Moscow recognised as early as the 1900s that the political and security importance of the Internet was such that it deserved the full attention of one of the country's most enduring and successful institutions: the secret police. In short, the FSB (intimate successor to the KGB) developed the ability to monitor every packet of data zinging in, out and around the country. This system goes under the appropriately sinister acronym of SORM-2, the Система Оперативно-Розыскных Мероприятий, or the System for Operative- Investigative Activities.

SORM-2 is truly frightening. Should you request information over the Web from your computer in Vladivostok or Krasnodar, then when it reaches your Internet Service Provider, a duplicate package dutifully trots off to FSB central in Moscow, to be read, mulled over, laughed at and (who knows?) used in evidence against you, at the FSB's pleasure. At the very least, it will be stored.

Not only does SORM-2 require that Russian ISPs feed all Internet activity through to the FSB's headquarters, but it adds insult to injury by compelling the ISPs to purchase the required equipment (at a cost of more than $10,000) and to fund the running costs of the service. These costs are of course passed on to consumers, who thus end up paying quite directly for a mighty tool of oppression of which they are the principal victims.

The Russian state has the capacity to know who is doing what, when, to whom and, probably, why over the Web. Of course, a sneaky Russian computer-user might concoct a plan to circumvent the all-seeing SORM-2 by encrypting their data and Internet browsing. But remember - encryption is illegal in Russia and one file with a digital lock on it would be enough to buy you a one-way ticket to Siberia.

That does not imply that the Internet regimes of Western govern- ments represent a model of free speech. On the contrary, as our dependency on the Internet increases, so the desire, ability and will of