Personal freedom and the right to free speech are two things that are enjoyed to varying degrees by many people around the world. Nowhere are those freedoms more clearly seen than on the Internet. Of course the laws of various countries sometimes get in the way but up until now the Internet has been the place where we can let those freedoms hang out for all to see.

Unfortunately it is now obvious that the Internet is also the vehicle for the greatest threats to free speech and personal freedoms. That is a situation that I would normally enjoy for its delicious irony if the potential threat to personal freedom were not so serious.

"In this brave new world of the Internet, there are obligations and moral restraints."

Until the Internet came along free speech was a relative thing. If I wanted to say something, I could stand on a street corner and rant and rave to my heart's content but my message would reach very few people. If I could afford the costs, I could always have my thoughts put into print but even then, the potential exposure would be limited.

With the arrival of the Internet, the right to free speech and the ability to disseminate the message began to achieve its full potential. For little or no cost, any person's message could be published on the Web and exposed to the world.

Even in countries where free speech is a tantalizing goal rather than a right, the Internet brought freedom to say what you wanted and the ability to get that message out to the world, as long as you weren't caught.

That would truly be wonderful if we were in a perfect world! True freedom would be just around the corner. Unfortunately that is not the case and just as the Internet unchained us and gave us freedom it also did the same to people who do not have the same altruistic goals that we have.

At the same time that I gained access to the world, so did other people who still remain in obscurity. People who never want their true identity to be revealed to the world, people who would rather exploit the freedoms without exercising any of the obligations and moral restraints that still apply in this new found free world.

In this brave new world of the Internet there are obligations and moral restraints. We have the right to our privacy, we have the right not to be exposed to things that we choose not to see, we have the right to maintain control over the things that are personal to us.

Unfortunately the hackers and cyber-terrorists exploit these freedoms for their own twisted goals and bring the rest of us to the point where we will choose to give up the very things that we cherish about the Internet.

Every day new viruses appear that are harder and harder to detect. Modern viruses don't just bring themselves when they come calling, they bring and install backdoor entrances for their buddies or carry other complete viruses that are often missed by anyone trying to clean up an infected system.

Hackers and script kiddies constantly surf looking for vulnerable computers that they can access. When they find them, they install small undetectable programs that lay dormant on the target machine until the hacker has a need for access to the net from machines that can't be traced back to him. When that need arises the hacker takes control of the machine and uses it. Denial of service attacks are invariably launched by hackers who might call on several hundred individual computers around the world to do their dirty work.

Spyware and Adware infiltrate our machines often hidden within other proprietary software. These programs are designed to show us advertising that we don't want to see or collect and distribute information about us that we don't want others to know. Many of these programs are designed to seek out and remove any conflicting software that may be found on the computer when they are installed.

Let's not forget about email spam. Many of us receive hundreds of spam emails a day trying to sell us everything from pasta recipes to porn so vile that even adult webmasters can't handle it.

Of course there are things that we can do to protect ourselves from all of this. We can install firewalls and anti-virus software. We can filter our email and scan for Spyware but no matter how careful we are, it is inevitable that something will get through our defences.

Right now Intel, Microsoft and some of the other big names are working toward protecting us from some of the worst affects of virus and hacker attacks. Under the systems that Microsoft and Intel are working on, important personal information will be encrypted and placed in a secure vault on each computer along with your user settings.

Anything inside the vault will only be accessible once the access key is verified. New hardware will have to be certified safe by the security system before it will be recognised by the operating system.

That sounds fine until you realize that the computer owner will not be able to access or over-ride the information stored in the vault.

Personal computers are our personal property, many of us like to tinker and optimize various bits and pieces. We like to add and remove peripherals when we feel like it and we don't like to be told by the OS manufacturer which peripherals we can and cannot use. At this moment, we have the personal freedom to do whatever we want with our own computers.

Under the new systems we will lose that freedom. With no access to the critical information stored in the vault we will be forced to only do what the manufacturer allows us to do with our own computers. Our personal computers won't be so personal anymore.

Right now Microsoft and Intel are saying that when these new security settings start to appear new machines will be shipped with the settings turned off and it will be up to the purchaser to enable them. What choice does that give us?

It is a bit like a policeman reading a person his rights. We have the right to give up our freedom and enable the settings or we have the right to remain exposed to an ever increasing level of virus and hacker attacks. What sort of choice is that?

Isn't it ironic, the very freedoms that we enjoy are being used against us to the point where many of us will be prepared to give up those freedoms just to keep our belongings and our personal information safe from viruses and hackers.

I wish it weren't that way because for so many of us, letting the bad guys win was never part of the plan.