You are growing up in Berlin, where you're parents work for European multinational firms. You've been learning a lot about using the Network in school, and to help you complete your homework, your parents have given you almost complete access to all parts of the Net.

Recently, you have also become very involved in the protest against PINEZ, the Pacific Island Nation Economic Zone, for their use of slave labor, exploitation of the environment, and alleged production of chemical weapons.

With a few of your friends, you read newsgroups of dissents discussing the issues, and when you are approached by several people to help in the efforts to get information to dissidents in the region, you and your friends agree, although you realize that in school, you have learned that there are international treaties against using the Internet for this kind of grass-roots campaigning. The Treaties of Information Collaboration completed at the end of the last millennium have lead to a remarkable network of data sharing and collaboration between governments, and ID codes and other traces are routinely shared. Although the free nations of the worlds protested this arrangement, economic considerations eventually drove them to accept this sort of information exchange in return for the promise that the Net would be kept open for business.

So you are careful to operate as covertly as possible, to avoid revealing your identities to any official authorities. Nonetheless, you and your friends begin to receive warning messages from the Pacific Islands Cyber Defense Committee, warning you that your contributions are "slanders directed against the cultural integrity of the people of the Pacific Islands "and that all necessary actions will be taken to prevent your efforts."

You aren't particular concerned, however, since the Pacific is pretty far from Germany, you continue your efforts. The next day, however, two policemen from the European Information Supervisory Agency arrive at the front door; a complaint had been issued against you by the PINEZ, and by international agreement, it was the duty of the European community to assist the PINEZ police in efforts to prevent foreign nationals from using the Net to interfere in the domestic issues of their nation. You are informed that your e-mail will now be read and censored for information that violates the international agreements. Meanwhile, the dissidents who contacted you originally have found new information distributors now that you are washed up.