Berners-Lee dismisses government surveillance plans

Government-proposed plans to watch citizens' internet and contact use have been described as a "destruction of human rights" by web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

In an interview with The Guardian, Berners-Lee said the measures were dangerous and may be dropped. He said that the planned surveillance plans would make a big amount of highly intimate information susceptible to theft or release by corrupt officials â€" and it was moves by governments to manage or spy on the web that "keep me up most at night".

He said: “The concept that we should always routinely record details about people is clearly very dangerous. It signifies that there'll be information around which may be stolen, which might be acquired through corrupt officials or corrupt operators, and [can be] used, as an instance, to blackmail people within the government or people within the military. We open ourselves out, if we store this knowledge, to it being abused.”

He also said that if the govt believed it was necessary to collect this type of sensitive data, it might should establish a "very strong independent body" which could investigate every use of the surveillance powers to set up whether the objective did pose a threat, and whether the intrusion had produced valuable evidence.

Speaking on the RSA Conference Europe in October last year, Berners-Lee said internet users ought to be ready to control their information and store it as they want, saying that private data will likely be not controlled by the "owner", and when it's miles given to a 3rd party it's always hard to understand who it's ultimately shared with.

In an interview with SC Magazine recently, information commissioner Christopher Graham said he expected the proposed Government surveillance plans to face out in next month's Queen's Speech, which might not have "an awful lot else in it".

He said: “Obviously this can be quite big and i've been working with the house Office on a common compatibility to check this with both the last government and the present government, and our position is consistent in regard to the last government's commitment.”