Web inventor calls for safeguarding internet freedom

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the internet, has charged western governments with hypocrisy over internet snooping.

Attacking the use of electronic data surveillance by US and UK governments, he questioned the ability of the security services to keep information safe.

He told The Times, in the Middle East, people had been given access to the internet but they had been snooped on and then jailed.

He said obviously it would be easy for people in the west to say those governments should not be allowed to spy, but it was clear that developed nations were seriously spying on the internet.

He warned there could be dangerous consequences  from recent revelations about British and American surveillance of citizens' web use.

US whistleblower, Edward Snowden had revealed details of a National Security Agency program called Prism, under which US security agencies collected information online from millions of people's web activity (See: Whistleblower behind leak on US government phone snooping, Edward Snowden goes public).

There have also been accusations of the UK's Government Communications Headquarters using data gathered through Prism for spying on UK citizens.

Speaking ahead of acceptance of the inaugural Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering yesterday, Sir Tim said, ''Information on the web can be really important in peoples' survival.

''Teenagers who are unsure about their sexuality who need to contact others, or people being abused trying to find helplines ... there are things that happen on the net that are very intimate, which people are going to be loathe to do if they feel there's somebody looking over their shoulder."

He added, his invention of the world wide web needed to safeguarded against control by governments or large corporations.

The words of warning from the computer scientist came as the Queen recognised his pioneering work along with that of his five colleagues in helping to create the internet.

The joint winners of the inaugural Queen Elizabeth prize for engineering, Berners-Lee, Robert Kahn, Vint Cerf and Louis Pouzin received £1 million at the hands of the Queen during a glittering Buckingham Palace reception attended by David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband.

Their work in creating a network of interconnected computer systems, the internet, along with interlinked web pages accessible by the internet has radically transformed communication.

The Queen described how aspects of modern life had been completely changed and hailed engineering as the "noble profession".