Tim Berners-Lee: UK and US Must Do More to Protect Internet Users' Privacy

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web

THE GUARDIAN: 'Tide of surveillance and censorship' threatens future of democracy, says inventor of world wide web

The UK and US must do more to protect internet users' privacy, the inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has warned as a survey of online freedoms is released.

Berners-Lee warned that "a growing tide of surveillance and censorship" posed a threat to the future of democracy, even as more and more people were using the internet to expose wrongdoing.

His remarks came before the second annual release of a global league table that classifies countries according to a set of freedoms. Since last year, the US has dropped from second place to fourth, while the UK has remained in third place. Sweden still tops the list, with Norway in second place. All of the Scandinavian countries – Sweden, Denmark and Norway – feature in the top 10.

The UK was poorly placed on privacy rights but was lifted by its high scores for availability of relevant content and the internet's political impact. Read on and comment » | Charles Arthur and agencies | Friday, November 22, 2013

The Internet of the Future: The Grid
YAHOO NEWS (UK & IRELAND): The internet, as we know it, could be obsolete within a decade.

Forget dial-up; forget broadband: The future, it seems, is The [sic] Grid.

It's the brainchild of CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research based in Geneva.

It's there that Sir Tim Berners-Lee first invented the internet, so it's appropriate that the next stage in its evolution should emerge there.

But what is the Grid?

In fact, it is a spin-off from another major research project. For several years, the particle physicists at CERN have been building a device called the Large Hadron Collider.

Knowing they would need massive processing capability to cope with the data from the new device, the scientists set about integrating thousands of computers all around the world.

Professor Tony Doyle, technical director of the project, says: "We need so much processing power, if all the computers were here at CERN there would be a problem getting enough electricity to run them.

"We had to have a new network powerful enough to send the data instantly to research partners in other countries."

That network of linked computers - connected by superfast fibre-optic cable and combining together to act as one giant super-computer - is the Grid and, one day, it won't just be for scientists. We'll all be connected to it. Unlocking the Internet of the Future >>>

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