Big Brother is no longer watching Russia's citizens at every turn, but many of them fear he is reading their e-mail. The successor to the KGB has set up a network of data links connected to every major Russian Internet service provider that allows unlimited monitoring of private e-mail and electronic banking. The System for Operational Investigative Activities (SORM in Russian) was introduced quietly late last year by government regulations that needed no parliamentary approval. Russia's unloved Federal Security Service (FSB), which took over the KGB's domestic duties, is able to monitor electronic communication without the need for search warrants. The FSB and its defenders in parliament insist that this is merely a cost-effective means of surveillance on crime in cyberspace, but few doubt that the FSB is not above selling its information to the highest bidder.

Imagine a workplace that required you to pass a daily retinal scan and a monthly lie detector test, and a job where the ultimate badge of honor is complete silence. Welcome to the world of a spy.

In this top-secret world where just talking about your job could earn you a prison sentence, only one man has been willing to talk openly about his role in the global eavesdropping network known as ECHELON.

Retired intelligence officer Mike Frost spent 19 years collecting top-secret information at Canada's Communications Security Establishment (CSE), Canada's equivalent of America's National Security Agency (NSA). Frost, who was trained by the NSA, says that eavesdropping is going on all the time. For example, here's what could happen if you use a so-called key word like "bomb," even in a private conversation.

"A lady was on the phone talking to her friend about a school play that she'd been to the night before; her son was in a school play," recalls Frost. "She thought he'd done a lousy job, and she said to her friend, 'Boy, he really bombed last night.' And that conversation was highlighted and ended up on an analyst's desk the next morning because the word 'bomb' was in there, and all this lady was doing was talking about her son and his play. Now that conversation of that lady is held at CSE indefinitely, so if two or three or four years later, she talks about somebody else bombing or something, and the computer spits it out again as being the second or third hit on this person's name, you can graduate from being a possible terrorist to a probable terrorist. It's that easy.

"And if the NSA says that you are a probable terrorist and passes that information on to those responsible for that sort of activity, just think about what could happen to your life, and you'd never know why. All of a sudden, your MasterCard doesn't work anymore; All of a sudden, your phone is down; all of a sudden, things are falling apart in your life. You have no reason why, and nobody'll ever tell you."

Speaking out about ECHELON has ultimately cost Mike Frost some of his own privacy. "The pressure is being applied very subtly," he says. "Letters that arrive in an opened condition, strange things happening to my answering machine when I'm not even in the house--it becomes unplugged or turned off, or turned on and plugged in, strange footprints on my carpet, very subtle things. Not that I can go to anyone and say somebody broke into my home, because there is no sign of forced entry in any way. My friends will say, what's the matter with your phone; there's an echo."

He has a warning for anyone who says "it can't happen to me." "If you don't want anybody to know about what you're saying, don't say it. Because if you do say it, somebody will be listening."

The phone rang and a stranger was on the line: "Happy Birthday." That was spooky--the next day I would turn 37. "Your full name is Adam Landis Penenberg," the caller continued. Then Daniel Cohn, Web detective, reeled off my birth date, address in New York, and Social Security number. Just two days earlier I had issued Cohn a challenge: Starting with my first and last name, dig up as much information about me as you can. "That didn't take long," I said.

"It took about five minutes," Cohn said, cackling back in Boca Raton, Fla. "I'll have the rest within a week." In all of six days Dan Cohn and his Web detective agency, Docusearch.com, shattered every notion I had about privacy in this country. Using only a keyboard and the phone, he was able to uncover the innermost details of my life--whom I call late at night; how much money I have in the bank; my salary and rent. He even got my unlisted phone numbers, both of them.

Okay, so you've heard it before: America has lost its privacy to the computer. But it's far worse than you think. Advances in data-sifting techniques and the rise of massive databases have conspired to strip you naked. The spread of the Web is the final step. It will make most of the secrets you have more instantly available than ever before, ready to reveal themselves in a few taps on the keyboard. Computers now hold half a billion bank accounts, half a billion credit card accounts, hundreds of millions of mortgages and retirement funds and medical claims and more. The Web seamlessly links it all together.

It will be a salesman's dream--and a paranoid's nightmare. Adding to the paranoia: Hundreds of data sleuths like Dan Cohn of Docusearch have opened up shop on the Web to sell precious pieces of these data. Cohn's firm will get a client your unlisted number for $49, your Social Security number for $49 and your bank balances for $45. Your driving record goes for $35; tracing a cell phone number costs $84. Cohn will even tell someone what stocks, bonds and securities you own (for $209).

Cohn's first step into my digital domain was to plug my name into the credit bureaus--Transunion, Equifax, Experian. In minutes he had my Social Security number, address and birth date. Armed with my credit information, Dan Cohn tapped other sites. He soon had the ability to map my routines, if he had chosen to do so: how much cash I burn in a week ($400), how much I deposit twice a month ($3,061), my favorite neighborhood bistro (the Flea Market Cafe), the $720 monthly checks I write out to my psychotherapist.

He had my latest phone bill ($108) and a list of long distance calls made from home--including late-night dalliances with a woman who traveled a lot. Cohn also divined the phone numbers of a few of my sources, underground computer hackers who aren't wanted by the police--but probably should be.

Knowing my Social Security number and other personal details helped Cohn get access to a Federal Reserve database that told him where I had deposits. He even found accounts I had forgotten long ago.

A few days later Cohn located my cash management account, opened a few months earlier at Merrill Lynch & Co. How did Cohn get hold of my Merrill Lynch secrets? Directly from the source. Cohn says he phoned Merrill Lynch and talked to one of 500 employees who can tap into my data. "Hi, I'm Dan Cohn, a licensed state investigator conducting an investigation of an Adam Penenberg," he told the staffer, knowing the words "licensed" and "state" make it sound like he works for law enforcement.

Then he recited my Social Security number, birth date and address, "and before I could get out anything more he spat out your account number." Cohn told the helpful worker: "I talked to Penenberg's broker, um, I can't remember his name…."

"Dan Dunn?" the Merrill Lynch guy asked. "Yeah, Dan Dunn," Cohn said. The staffer then read Cohn my complete history--balance, deposits, withdrawals, check numbers and amounts.

Sprint, my long distance carrier, investigated how my account was breached and found that a Mr. Penenberg had called to inquire about my most recent bill. Bell Atlantic, my local phone company, told me a similar tale, only it was a Mrs. Penenberg who called in on behalf of her husband--though I'm not married.

Until a better solution emerges, I'm starting over: I will change all of my bank, utility and credit-card account numbers and apply for new unlisted phone numbers. That should keep the info-brokers at bay for a while--at least for the next week or two.

To former detective Frank Jones, "secure network" is an oxymoron. The word "delete" isn't in his vocabulary. If you're among the anonymous thousands of cyber bad guys who inhabit the Internet's underbelly, Jones is your worst nightmare.

The retired New York City detective works on the law enforcement sidelines building software tools to help the government and police crack down on online criminals.

And his latest tool is considered the ultimate weapon. Jones wrote the widely used, but little-known software program called DIRT. The program works like a telephone wiretap for computers, giving its users the ability to monitor and intercept data from any Windows PC in the world.

DIRT stands for Data Interception by Remote Transmission and was originally created by Jones as a tool to help snare online child pornographers. But in the short time it has been available only to government and law enforcement agencies, DIRT is now used to battle hacker groups and to trap terrorists, drug dealers, money launderers, and spies.

The DIRT program is less than 20KB in size and is usually sneaked inside an e-mail attachment, a macro, or a workable program that a targeted user is enticed to download. Once inside a target Windows 95/98/NT computer, it gives law enforcement complete control of the system without the user's knowledge.

It starts off by secretly recording every keystroke the user makes. The next time the user goes online, DIRT transmits the log for analysis. Jones says government agencies have even managed to open encrypted files by obtaining password locks.

During a recent program demonstration, Jones easily uploaded and downloaded files to a DIRT-infected computer connected to the Net by a dial-up modem. Jones could upload and download files to the PC without a hint of activity on the other end.

The hardest part of using DIRT, say its users, is getting owners of targeted computers to download the Trojan horse programs. Typically law enforcement tries to entice a targeted individual to download a program or a compressed file that must be "unzipped" which contains the DIRT bug inside. Because the program is not available to the public, DIRT is undetectable using virus scanning software, Jones said.

"The only way to avoid DIRT is to ignore your e-mail," he says.

A sophisticated new surveillance system may soon be tipping off police and security officers about crimes before they even occur. British researchers have developed a means of spotting a potential shoplifter or mugger, a car thief lurking in a parking lot or someone about to commit suicide, perhaps by throwing themselves in front of a train.

People contemplating these acts behave differently from others and their actions can be predicted mathematically, New Scientist magazine said. The researchers plan to develop a range of security features to spot criminal behavior in a project funded by the European Commission. The system will be connected to closed circuit televisions and send an alarm to security guards or the police if it sees something suspicious.

WASHINGTON -- Last week, Representative Bob Barr, R-Ga., maneuvered an amendment into the national security budget to evoke some answers from the notoriously close-mouthed National Security Agency about a controversial surveillance system code-named Project Echelon.

It began with a secret post-World-War-II pact between the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, countries housing ECHELON's half dozen listening posts.

The project has five "ear-in-the-sky" satellites capable of monitoring sounds from thousands of miles away. They allow ECHELON to intercept virtually any internationally transmitted phone call, fax, e-mail or data transfer for the ostensible purpose of tracking international terrorist groups or drug cartels. But unlike many spying relics of the Cold War, ECHELON is aimed at surveillance of civilian communications, such as business and personal e-mails. Barr's office estimates ECHELON intercepts up to 2 million transmissions per hour.

While the NSA will neither confirm nor deny the existence of the ECHELON system, a report commissioned by the European Parliament last year confirmed that every communication in Europe has been subject to surveillance for years and the system can decode any clever encryptions. More alarmingly, European business intelligence has been known to leak from the NSA to American businesses, providing American businesses with illicit information on mergers, take-overs and bids.

But the NSA is prohibited from gathering domestic intelligence. So Barr has sought a report from the NSA to ensure that it is not collecting information without the legal authorization or the consent of the American people.

By law, according to John Pike, a military analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, the NSA can record and mark a conversation with an American and an international, via phone, e-mail and fax. But the NSA must blackout the name of the American and use a denotation of "U.S. Citizen" for privacy reasons or the information must be immediately discarded. Barr's recent request, however, seeks documentation of every instance where the NSA did not mark out the name of the American, breaking privacy laws enacted in the 1970's.

Barr's request of the NSA won't affect the project in the slightest, according to Pike. "They are going to continue to gather anything they want to, but the wild card is what will be revealed in the report. We can assume that the NSA did not flat out break the law, but we can also assume that Barr won't be told much and the public will be told less" about Project ECHELON.