Tim Berners-Lee til kamp mod overvågning af Internettet

Den britiske regering synes, at efterretningstjenesten skal overvåge al internettrafik, herunder al privat trafik på alle sociale medier som Facebook, MSN og så videre.

Tim Berners-Lee, der opfandt World Wide Web og dermed nettet, som vi kender det i dag, mener, at en så total overvågning vil knuse enhver forestilling om menneskerettigheder. The Guardian skriver:

Tim Berners-Lee, who serves as an adviser to the government on how to make public data more accessible, says the extension of the state’s surveillance powers would be a “destruction of human rights” and would make a huge amount of highly intimate information vulnerable to theft or release by corrupt officials. In an interview with the Guardian, Berners-Lee said: “The amount of control you have over somebody if you can monitor internet activity is amazing.”You get to know every detail, you get to know, in a way, more intimate details about their life than any person that they talk to because often people will confide in the internet as they find their way through medical websites … or as an adolescent finds their way through a website about homosexuality, wondering what they are and whether they should talk to people about it.”

Tim Berners-Lee warns against web snooping bill Link to this audioThe British computer engineer, who devised the system that allows the creation of websites and links, said that of all the recent developments on the internet, it was moves by governments to control or spy on the internet that “keep me up most at night”.

The government ran into a storm of criticism earlier this month when it emerged that it was planning to allow GCHQ to monitor all communication on social media, Skype calls and email communication as well as logging every site visited by internet users in Britain.

Berners-Lee said: “The idea that we should routinely record information about people is obviously very dangerous. It means that there will be information around which could be stolen, which can be acquired through corrupt officials or corrupt operators, and [could be] used, for example, to blackmail people in the government or people in the military. We open ourselves out, if we store this information, to it being abused.”

He said that if the government believed it was essential to collect this kind of sensitive data about individuals, it would have to establish a “very strong independent body” which would be able to investigate every use of the surveillance powers to establish whether the target did pose a threat, and whether the intrusion had produced valuable evidence.

But he said that since the coalition had not spelled out an oversight regime, or how the data could be safely stored, “the most important thing to do is to stop the bill as it is at the moment”.

The intervention of the highly respected internet pioneer creates a headache for Theresa May, the home secretary, who has said she plans to press on with introducing the new measures after the Queen’s speech next month, despite concerns raised by senior Liberal Democrats. It will add to the woes of ministers mired in damaging battles over unpopular policy proposals on several fronts.

Berners-Lee was speaking to the Guardian as part of a week-long series on the battle for control of the internet, examining how states, companies and technological developments are challenging the principles of openness and universal access on which the net was built.

Berners-Lee has been an outspoken defender of the “open internet”, warning in 2010 that web freedom was under threat from the rise of social network “silos” such as Facebook, “closed world” apps such as those released by Apple, and governments’ attempts to monitor people’s online behaviour.

He said he remained concerned about the creation of “strong monopolies” but believed it was unlikely that internet giants such as Facebook and Google would enjoy their dominance indefinitely. “The battle lines are being drawn and things are in a huge state of flux, so it’s very difficult to tell, when you look at the world now, what it’s going to look like in a few months’ time.”

He said that throughout the history of the internet, people had been concerned about the emergence of apparently dominant giants, but they were vulnerable to smaller companies that could innovate more effectively.

In a coded reference to predictions that Facebook could in soon become, in effect, for most people, the internet, he recalled a “wise” colleague who pointed out more than 20 years ago: “It’s amazing how quickly people on the internet can pick something up, but it’s also amazing how quickly they can drop it.”

Link: Tim Berners-Lee urges government to stop the snooping bill