The word security means many different things to people, especially to Internet users (and is anyone reading this still not an Internet user?) Two differing interests compete on the Internet: security for personal privacy and action, and security for vested corporate and government interests. No better example can be cited than that of anonymity. Anonymity is a chief concern for users who are afraid that their personal mail will be read without warrant by employers or even police, that their browsing habits will be monitored and recorded to contribute to consumer demographics databases, and that their file downloads will be evaluated by copyright cops. For the corporate-data security officer, law-enforcement official, online marketer, or publisher of traditional media, however, anonymity is dreaded, and seeking it may be cause for suspicion.

Security is defined in the American Heritage Dictionary as "freedom from danger, risk, or fear; confidence." What is not defined, of course, is whose confidence should be protected. Take Napster, for example. Individuals who embrace change view security as a conflict over maintaining the status quo. Defenders of the status quo view security as a means for protecting vital intellectual property.

What bears keeping in mind, however, is the fact that this "righteous individual against faceless corporate America" view of the Internet is largely inaccurate. For one thing, many Napster supporters actually take home paychecks from corporate America or big government, so tearing down the status quo will eventually hurt some of them. Employees and consumers are as integral to market capitalism as stockholders.

It is romantic, certainly, to believe that the Internet is truly revolutionary: upstart Davids of online commerce rocking the Goliaths of traditional business back on their heels. Plenty of dot-com startups have emerged from obscurity to impressive stock prices, and they make great magazine cover stories. But their actual earnings far outweigh the advantages that e-commerce has brought to established businesses. Think of how many people Citibank can lay off once they convince 70 percent of their customers to conduct their transactions online.

Meanwhile, government and its law enforcement arms exist (at least in theory) only through the will of its citizens. But it is hard to take the U.S. government's side in any online privacy dispute after reading about ECHELON. Like the Internet, ECHELON is a Cold War leftover that evolved to function very differently than its original intent. Following World War II, the National Security Agency (NSA) began monitoring all forms of communication. During the same period, it developed computing resources unequaled in terms of processing powers as well as the software and algorithms needed for voice and character recognition.

ECHELON is the code name for a network of intercept stations positioned around the globe to capture all satellite, microwave, cellular, and fiber-optic communications traffic. Federal documents released in 1997 confirmed that ECHELON tapped and recorded transmissions through every commercial communications satellite then in operation. NSA computers linked to ECHELON scanned for specified names or words and transcribed conversations and document transmissions.

Although it sounds like the delusions of a raving conspiracy theorist, many sources have confirmed that the ECHELON network has been used to monitor not only foreign threats, but also organizations such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International. Several NSA whistleblowers claim that the network eavesdrops on various U.S. politicians and suspected citizens. In case you felt inclined to ask, ECHELON monitoring has never been validated with anything like a warrant or court order.

Of course, Internet communication is potentially within the scope of ECHELON; the extent of the NSA's capability to crack the encryption used by PCs is unknown, but is probably quite good. The NSA is one of those agencies that seems to be a frightening exception to the rule of government ineffectiveness.

(The physical interception capabilities of ECHELON are largely unnecessary for anyone intending to spy via a widely-shared network medium, however. There are many parties, in fact, that could conceivably tap Internet communications. Data-encryption measures are all that keep information from being deciphered, and the lack of privacy standards and expectations keep encryption from universal usage.)

Another aspect of ECHELON's history serves as a caution to Internet users. When the Soviet Union fell apart and diminished as a threat, the NSA looked for other justifications for its activities. A liaison office within the Department of Commerce was created to forward relevant information to U.S. corporations.

Most of those ECHELON beneficiaries were, perhaps not surprisingly, large telecommunications and computer corporations that had participated in the development of the interception network. On the Internet, of course, the potential for the same self-serving behavior is at least as great. If you think the Internet is truly a by-the-people-and-for-the-people entity, empowering the individual against the faceless giant corporation, think again. Some of those faceless corporations, with names like Sprint and MCI, virtually own the physical backbone of the Internet, so the Internet is only egalitarian at their pleasure. David never wins when Goliath owns the rocks.

There are a lot of proposals for privacy standards and systems--probably too many. One that has received a lot less publicity (and venom from content producers and publishers) than past and present rebels like PGP, Napster, and Gnutella, is Freenet. In concept, if not in current execution, Freenet may be the most insidious of all data-distribution systems.

Like all the best computer innovations, Freenet began life as an undergraduate student project. Rather than encrypting data, the core concept of Freenet is the elimination of source-routing information from TCP/IP communications. In short, identification is no longer verifiable, ensuring anonymity. All Freenet participants run an extended IP protocol that makes this possible, and act as servers, not clients. When Freenet users decide to make a file (think bootleg MP3 music, nude JPEGs, or DivX movies if you're in a rebellious frame of mind) available to other users, it may not even be stored on their own servers, while those published by others may reside there.

Currently, Freenet is in its infancy. It has no effective file-search mechanism and no intuitive interface. Its creator, Ian Clarke, explains, "We have made it deliberately complicated to install, primarily because people who are more computer-literate tend to give more valuable feedback, so we wanted to raise the barriers to entry in the short term, during the debugging and development process." Clarke sees no reason why the system cannot be simplified, and believes that Freenet could eventually replace the Web. Of course, those Goliaths who own the rocks of Internet communications may think otherwise.

Joe Rudich is a network administrator with the St. Paul Companies in St. Paul, Minn. He can be contacted via e-mail at joe@rudich.com.