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'Hello, hello, my name is Danny. Can anyone hear me?' There were about 12 persons in the cyber room, but no one was saying anything. After a pause, a 'hello hello' came back. 'Hello Danny, do you copy?' 'Yes, I hear you.' 'Danny, where are you?' 'I am here in La Habana, Cuba. Where are you?' 'San Francisco, California.' The voice on the other end was confident and asked Danny questions about where exactly he was in Havana - 'ah, el Vedado, yes I know it well' - and why Danny was on the Internet - how did he get his connection? How come he had a computer? He explained he had a tourist friend who'd bought a card and he wanted to make friends. Then another voice chimed in: 'Danny, Danny, hello. Do you hear me? How good it is to speak to someone from home!' 'You can write to me at my e-mail address,' said Danny, and he gave it out. 'Wait, wait, let me write it down,' said the voice from San Francisco. At which point a little private conversation box popped up, from someone who called herself Ana 2323. 'BE CAREFUL,' the box said. 'Two of the persons in this chat room are working for the secret police. Don't give out your real name. Just make one up - anything you want. Don't let them know who you are. Listen to how insistent they are.' One of the voices kept asking where Danny had gone (he was talking to Ana 2323 in private). And the other popped up in a private box asking for his e-mail address. Yet another said how nice it was to meet him and that if he needed anything from California, just to let them know. Any help at all. We paused, standing back from the screen, and wondering what to do. The apparently friendly exchange suddenly seemed rather sinister. Just why were they so insistent? Asking all these questions? A myriad of possibilities opened up. They now knew where we were, Danny's full name (revealed in his Yahoo! ID), and that he had a foreign friend providing him with the Internet access. The next thing he could be asked was what he thought of Cuba, who he knew abroad. Whether he was planning to leave any time soon. And so on - all apparently leading into a trap. The Internet has opened up communication possibilities hitherto unimagined by Cubans, many of whom do want to leave the island. The Web offers communication and the ability to plan escape, to exchange information and make all-important contact with counter-revolutionary anti-Castro groups in Miami. No wonder the police are watching. But you can't hold back time. Down at the International Press Centre in central Havana, the state telephone company Etecsa plays host to a long line of persons waiting to buy their $ 15 card, which allows five hours Internet access from the Etecsa machines on the premises. Nothing, however, is to stop those interested from logging on from a computer (if they can get their hands on one) at home. In the Cuban chatroom, one of the things the 'friends' in 'San Francisco' most wanted to know was how Danny had managed to connect. While the Net may soon be legal here, the authorities will be doing their best to keep tabs on who's got what for as long as they can. Nothing can prevent those who want to from making contact with the outside world. Some Cubans have even managed to link their TVs up to the Spanish satellite stations in Miami - which offer many things including a provocatively dressed journalist interviewing 'Castro', who sits looking up her skirt. Courtesy of the rabidly right-wing anti-Castro radicals of course. When I told a friend at Radio Habana Cuba about Danny's Internet experience, he said: 'Perhaps the guys from San Francisco were for real. Perhaps Ana 2323 wasn't trying to help you. She may have been an anti-Castro Cuban in Miami, trying to make you paranoid about using the Internet... or searching for friendly recruits to the counter-revolutionary cause.' There's always another way of looking
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