Inventor of the World Wide Web: " 'Snooping' authorities threaten Internet"

[mcablue]

From Euractive.com
Thursday 3 December 2009

Tim Berners-Lee is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the inventor of the World Wide Web.

I don't want any snooping on my Internet traffic.

You can do things to ensure that my Internet runs smoothly, but when I am doing something which is perhaps very intimate: when someone looks up something to see if they have cancer, or a teenager wonders if they are homosexual or not and wants to go online to find answers, this should be private. So systems that monitor every click and build a profile of me are very damaging.

The things we do on the Internet are so intimate that they are much more valuable to others and damaging to me than having a permanent TV camera in my living room. I don't want my health premiums to go up if I look up health information; I don't want to be a suspected terrorist if I do research on chemicals, I don't want to get leaflets from gay rights groups if I look up something on sexuality.

Yes, you need to be able to look inside the Internet to fight serious crime but authorities should be required to seek a warrant from an independent body first.

Read story: http://www.euractiv.com/en/infosociety/web-inventor-snooping-authorities-threaten-internet/article-187987#

[KansDem]

1. I thought this was a thread about Al Gore.

Who's this "Tim Berners-Lee?" :shrug:

:sarcasm:

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. BING! nt

[snagglepuss]

3. K&R

[imdjh]

4. It's funny. I won't walk down the beach without a shirt on, but I'll Google:

.... the damnedest things without compunction.

It's all having the desired effect. I look at people with pornographic pictures of themselves online and once thought "How can they do that?" and later came to think, "It must be pretty liberating to do that." and still later thinking "Wow, I would love to be that comfortable in my skin." But that was back when only hotties put up nudies, now that everyone does it, it's not so admirable.

But I digress- surely this is the plan. Get Americans so we assume that some jackass is watching us through a peephole in the haberdasher's dressing room. Get Americans so we assume that our telephone calls are being monitored. Get Americans so that we figure that anyone so thoroughly bored as to monitor our internet searches deserves what he gets.

[nilram]

5. k&r, even though I know they're watching -nt

[no limit]

6. Not that I disagree. But you should never assume what you do on the internet is private

and that has very little to do with the government, instead it has to do with the insecure and open nature of the internet.

[Canuckistanian]

7. He's not talking about what you PUT on the Internet

He's talking about monitoring your BROWSING. Just LOOKING at the something on the Internet.

Big difference.

[no limit]

9. I'm not sure what you mean. Looking at something on the internet is exactly what I mean

with all the malware and everything else our right now you should never assume your browsing is private unless you truly know what you are doing. Your own computer is the biggest hazard, once your internet actions leave that they still have to travel through coutless routers any of which could be compromised.

[Canuckistanian]

10. My apologies

Not too many people realize that browsing records are routinely scanned by ISPs (or telecom switching stations) and handed over to authorities.

Most people DO naively believe that their Internet habits are not scrutinized.

[no limit]

11. No apologies needed

:)

[Uncle Joe]

8. Kicked and highly recommended.

Thanks for the thread, mcablue.:thumbsup: