“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
Tim Berners-Lee on the UK government’s controversial plans to allow intelligence agencies to monitor the internet use and digital communications of every person in the UK - social media, Skype calls and email communication as well as logging every site visited by internet users in Britain - and of course, reading all the draft messages in your email app, ie. your plans for world domination, your diary about dying of cancer without informing your family members. Not to mention what groceries you buy, what books you read, what movies you watch, who your friends are, what you talk with them about, where you are right now, where your girlfriend is, what kind of sex you like, what your girlfriend looks like (naked), what she had for dinner, who she’s having an affair with, what you are most afraid of, whose child it really is, when is the best time to nab you, and how to use your mental health history to dismiss allegations of extraordinary rendition.
In other words, the government wants to know more about you than you do. Is it too much to ask?
In other words, “Everybody off the internet. The internet is now closing.”
(Source: Guardian)
