Big money merges with Big Brother

They remind us that we Internet users are, indeed, under constant virtual surveillance. When the watchers have only commercial motives, such "spam" feels like a minor violation. But in China or Russia, the Internet is patrolled not by unsolicited peddlers, but by the police.

So Russian human-rights activists and the environmental organization Baikal Environmental Wave should not have been surprised when, earlier this month, flesh and blood policemen - not Internet bots - confiscated their computers and the files stored within them. In the time of the Soviet Union, the KGB would have indicted these anti-Putin dissidents for mental disorders. This supposedly being a "new Russia," cyber-dissidents are accused of violating intellectual property rights.