Web Tool Will Hide Users’ Identities, Even From Itself

A long-awaited software product/service combination that experts say could be the most sophisticated tool yet for ensuring Internet privacy will become publicly available today.

Freedom, which encrypts and privatizes users’ Web browsing, e-mail, Internet chat and newsgroup participation, differs from existing privacy products in a key way: Not even the Montreal-based service provider, Zero Knowledge Systems, can trace the Internet activities of its customers under any circumstances.

“If there is a gun pointed to my head, I cannot compromise a user’s privacy,” said Austin Hill, the company’s president.

Other encryption and Web-privacy products allow the recording of identifying information in server computers that manage Web transactions; such information could be stolen or obtained under court order.

Freedom encrypts messages and personal identifiers on the users’ PCs, then bounces them around a network of 150 independently operated intermediary servers between sender and recipient (whether a person or an Internet site). No single server learns both the originator and the destination--hence, it has nothing to be revealed.

Users purchase up to five pseudonymous identities from Zero Knowledge (https://www.freedom.net) for $49.95, good for one year each, or can try the product free for 45 days. Freedom, which requires Windows 95 or Windows 98, initially will be limited to 10,000 new subscribers a week as the company scales up its network. Beginning in February, it will accommodate all interested customers.

However, even with Freedom, the paranoid among us will not be able to privatize every aspect of electronic life. The product so far lacks e-commerce capabilities because merchants still insist on charging a credit card for transactions.

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Charles Piller can be reached at charles.piller@latimes.com.