searched for Drazen Pantic on the Internet.
The first two links I found were to his resume and home page. Unfortunately, both of those pages are on computers inside the ''AC.YU'' domain - academic computers within the former Yugoslavia. Both of those machines are unreachable on the Internet today.
Fortunately, I could still find articles about Pantic, a professor of mathematics at Belgrade University, who until recently was the director of OpenNet, the Internet service provider of Belgrade's formerly independent radio station, B92 (www.b92.net).
The story of OpenNet and B92 clearly demonstrates the power of the Internet to overcome political oppression - especially censorship by dictatorships. In December 1996, when Serbian authorities demanded that B92 cease broadcasting, the radio station's staff sent out its programs over the Internet to broadcasters outside Serbia, who then rebroadcast the programs into the country. Two days later, Serbian authorities relented, and allowed B92 back on the air.
This past March, the Serbs banned B92 again, and once again the radio station started broadcasting on the Internet.
''For something like almost 10 days, the Internet and air around Serbia was so full of the B92 signal,'' said Pantic, who spoke last week in Washington at the annual conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy.
But the OpenNet story also shows that the Internet is vulnerable to brute force. On April 2, Serbian authorities seized the ISP and changed the programming.
When OpenNet started offering service in November 1995, it was Belgrade's only ISP. It was sponsored by the Fund for an Open Society, the organization created by billionaire financier George Soros that is trying to end dictatorships. The idea was to let Serbs get news and communicate with the world.
But the dictatorship started its own ISPs in March 1996; Pantic says these providers are one-way organizations, designed to carry propaganda. Recently, the ISPs have also been used to attack the NATO Web site and to send unwanted junk e-mail advocating the Serbian cause.
Meanwhile, Pantic has tried mightily to ensure freedom and privacy. He has used encryption and remote storage to protect OpenNet's users, even when they didn't want to be protected.
OpenNet created an encrypted tunnel between its computer in Belgrade and XS4ALL, an ISP in Amsterdam where OpenNet stored all of its subscribers' e-mail and Web pages. When an OpenNet user in Belgrade checked his mail, the messages would automatically be encrypted when they were sent from XS4ALL's computers in Amsterdam to OpenNet's computer in Belgrade, than decrypted when the message was sent from OpenNet to the user.
This encryption system wasn't perfect: Serb authorities couldn't eavesdrop on the communications between OpenNet and XS4ALL, but they could wiretap OpenNet's own modems and eavesdrop on the actual messages as they were being sent to subscribers.
But Pantic didn't think this was much of a problem: Modem transmissions are much harder to eavesdrop on than high-speed, long-distance data lines. Even so, said Pantic, after the encrypted tunnel was installed, the Serbs cut the data line every Saturday around noon. They were hoping, he said, that by watching the tunnel start up, they might be able to figure out how it was working.
But despite these minor technological triumphs, it's important to remember that the Internet was only available to people in Belgrade who had access to computers. Indeed, in many parts of the world, repressive regimes work hand in hand with economics to restrict on-line access.
Nowhere is this partnership more evident than in China, said Bobson Wong, of the Digital Freedom Network, who spoke at the same conference last week.
Search the Web site of the British Broadcasting Corp. for stories about the Internet and China, said Wong, and you'll find articles on human rights abuses, and China's decision to remove pornography and information about democratic rights.
''You do that same search on Chinese Daily, and you get a whole bunch of stories about the high cost of Internet access and the lack of content.''
A current survey of Chinese Web surfers found that the Net was ''too slow, too expensive, and too English,'' said Wong. ''Most of the Web is in English, and most people in China do not read English. So most of the Internet users in China are well-educated. They are students or work in computers, and they are pretty well off.''
The most telling statistic, he said, is this: ''The average cost of a computer in China is about $1,000. But the per capita income for urban city residents, as of 1997, is $620. A lot of people in China save for computers the way people in America save for cars.''
The Internet has a great capacity for bringing social change. The free flow of information changes societies from within: That's why the regimes in Belgrade and Beijing fear giving their citizenry unrestricted access.
Technology writer Simson L. Garfinkel can be reached at plugged-in@simson.net.
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