Of course, just because the beloved internet was begun as an intelligence entity and is still administered by a government agency doesn't mean that it still functions as an intelligence tool. It is worth noting, however, that the company that was primarily responsible for repackaging the internet into a civilian entity, America Online, is perhaps the most thinly veiled intelligence front ever conceived.

This can be easily verified by a visit to AOL's corporate website, where visitors learn - among other things - that the company is headquartered in Dulles, Virginia.

Curious as to where this might be, I attempted to locate the city of Dulles on a couple of maps, to no avail. This, I learned, was because Dulles is actually an offshoot of Langley, Virginia.

Langley is also rather difficult to locate on a map. For the uninitiated, this is because Langley, Virginia is the home of the Central Intelligence Agency. In fact, there isn't much else in Langley, Virginia, which exists almost exclusively to provide residence to the thousands of employees of the CIA's headquarters. And it is precisely there that you will find the home of AOL. Apparently recognizing the negative connotations of a Langley mailing address, the company essentially created a 'suburb' and named it Dulles. Dulles, by the way, is named in honor of the notorious Dulles siblings, Allen and John Foster, whose names were virtually synonymous with the U.S. intelligence infrastructure through both World Wars and much of the Cold War.

Another fact about AOL that belies its true function is the composition of its Board of Directors.

Here you will find such high-level military/intelligence assets as General Colin Powell and General Alexander Haig. All of which gives a whole new meaning to that all-seeing eye that comprises the company's logo.

The ways in which we are encouraged to use the internet also belie an intelligence function. Perhaps the most popular use is for communicating via e-mail, which is rapidly replacing other modes of communication. Not coincidentally, e-mail communications are far easier to intercept than are correspondence by phone or letter, especially given that they are traveling on a network designed by spooks.