Tim Berners-Lee Slams ‘Dangerous’ Snooping Law

Sir Tim Berners-Lee has become the latest high-profile voice to criticise the government’s proposed internet surveillance measures, saying the issue “keeps me up most at night”.

Plans to allow GCHQ to monitor online and mobile communications were revealed by the Home Office earlier this month, prompting condemnation from politicians across all parties and privacy groups.

Many concerned parties, including the Open Rights Group, a host of Liberal Democrat MPs and Tory MP David Davis, expressed a fear that the powers would allow the government to intrude on privacy and develop a backlog of information on innocent people, all without a warrant. The home secretary Theresa May defended the proposals by emphasising their use in tracking down terrorists and paedophiles, though authorities already have this capability after gaining a warrant.

Privacy in danger

Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web and an adviser to the government on open data, explained that the mass collection of public information would be “very dangerous” in an interview with the Guardian.

“The amount of control you have over somebody if you can monitor internet activity is amazing,” Berners-Lee said. Highlighting the extremely private motivations behind people’s browsing habits, he added that any data breach could have significant repercussions.

“The idea that we should routinely record information about people is obviously very dangerous,” he told the Guardian. “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.”

Berners-Lee went on to say that if the government does feel it necessary to acquire public data, a “very strong independent body which has complete oversight” should be set up. He proposed that this body should be able to analyse every instance that the government chooses to access data, holding it to account if the intrusion does not yield results.

Though Nick Clegg, the deputy PM, promised that significant data safeguards would be worked into the legislation, Sir Tim raised the issue of data storage and security. Considering the government’s history of losing data in laptops and on USB sticks, there is a possibility that browsing and communications data could be similarly at risk. In this light, Berners-Lee stated that the most important thing is to “stop the bill as it is at the moment”.

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