Fight for Freedom Logs On

In Cuba, the Internet has become the latest battleground in that country's quiet struggle for freedom. With World Wide Web access restricted to only a few government-controlled websites, increasing numbers of Cubans are hacking through President Fidel Castro's censorship.

While many in the Western world use the internet for trivial reasons -- such as chat rooms and file sharing -- in Cuba, it has become a powerful weapon of liberation from government control.

The Internet offers ordinary Cubans a way to escape the clutches of a totalitarian society that regulates all flow of information. They can access unfiltered news from the outside world, and communicate with friends and family that have escaped to other countries. In Cuba, these Web-surfing freedom fighters are known as "informaticos.''

Clear threat

Having seen how glasnost (''openness'') hastened the collapse of Soviet communism, Castro knows that these informaticos pose a threat to his regime. Clearly, Cubans who are plugged into the outside world will be much harder to control, more likely to flee and certainly less susceptible to communist propaganda.

The government controls all four of Cuba's Internet Service Providers (ISP). These ISPs block any sites that are viewed as remotely anti-Castro, anti-communist or pro-democracy. In fact, anything considered even possibly subversive is banned. Moreover, legal access is only available through a registered account with Cuba's National Center for Automated Data Exchange, so the government can keep tabs on everyone.

Restricted access, sites

For the most part, just academics and government workers can legally access websites -- but only ones that promote Cuban tourism and communism. They can read propaganda about how wonderful life is in Cuba and how happy the Cuban people are. But they can't read about the many so-called ''political dissidents'' and independent journalists who are currently in prison simply for having opinions.

The government spies on its own citizens to make sure they're not accessing the web without authorization. Every community has minders that are paid by the government for snooping and reporting on their neighbors. And people who are caught accessing the web illegally face fines and imprisonment.

Basic Internet service costs $260 a month in Cuba. That's prohibitive, considering the average Cuban makes the equivalent of about $192 per month. In other words, Castro has fixed it so that it's impossible for the average Cuban to afford legal access to the Internet.

But despite these and other obstacles, the informaticos are finding a way to access the Internet and circumvent Castro's censorship.

Piecemeal penetration

Relying on the same ingenuity they use to keep 1960s-era cars running without spare parts, most informaticos acquire used laptops from friends in foreign countries and modify the hardware and software to get around government snooping and censorship.

Informaticos access and trade banned web sites as text attachments, and even trade on the black market for Internet passwords. They have developed their own code for words that raise red flags with government censors.

By suppressing the Internet, Castro hopes to control his people. But with digital freedom a dial tone away, real freedom may follow.