On Friday, the EFF posted Switzerland, a free software utility that users can run to determine whether their ISPs are fiddling with their bits behind the scenes. According to Fred von Lohmann, the EFF's senior intellectual property attorney, "Comcast isn't the first, and certainly won't be the last, ISP to meddle surreptitiously with its subscribers' Internet communications for its own benefit."

Switzerland, a command-line-driven utility, tests whether a user's IP packets have been tampered with, added to or rerouted. An open-source project, the Switzerland utility is but one part of the EFF's "Test Your ISP" project, designed to raise consumer awareness of ISP activities.

Switzerland can also detect whether an ISP is using various spy tools, such as Sandvine, AudibleMagic and Fair Eagle. Sandvine is an application that monitors P2P network activity and inserts forged packets into P2P streams that exceed thresholds set by the ISP. The forged packets cause a reset of the transmission, slowing speeds to below the setting.

AudibleMagic is a software tool that samples the actual content of P2P transferred files, capturing a representative sample of a suspected copyrighted audio file. It then compares the sample to a database of more than 3.7 million copyrighted works to see if there is a match. The software can then disrupt the transfer or log the transfer to a file.

Fair Eagle, a particularly invasive application used by some ISPs, inserts ads into Web views, regardless of destination.

The EFF hopes that use of Switzerland will not only give consumers an opportunity to check their broadband connections, but also to put ISPs on notice that spying might, indeed, be a two-way street. By testing ISPs it will become public knowledge who is spying on whom, what ISPs are surreptitiously modifying traffic and which ISPs are living up to their claims of free and unfettered Internet usage.

This also comes on the heels of British Telecom secretly spying on more than 180,000 of its broadband users as it tested a new adware program. Reports of the test were leaked in June, as well as an admission from Charter Communications that it would test similar adware and tracking software. The BT test crashed browsers and caused many users to suspect their systems had become infected with a virus.

At present, the EFF admits that the Switzerland utility is targeted more toward sophisticated end users. More user-friendly versions are promised in the near future. The "Test Your ISP" Web site (www.eff.org/testyourisp) hosted by EFF lists seven other ISP-testing tools with links to many of the utilities. The EFF hopes to collect results from user tests throughout the world to get a comprehensive look at how ISPs are handling their users' access. The data will also help the open-source effort to develop even greater tools in combating ISP abuse.