tagged w/ Tim Berners-Lee
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One of the founders of the internet, British computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has attacked a proposal to store all Australian's internet data use for two years. The proposal is being considered by a joint parliamentary committee and would require internet service providers to keep a log of individual internet data. Sir Tim Berners-Lee says the information could be leaked or misused and governments cannot be trusted to keep it secret. John Stewart reports.
JOHN STEWART, REPORTER: The first internet was developed by the US military during the Cold War to protect their communication systems from a nuclear strike.
20 years later, Sir Tim Berners-Lee took the next step, helping to develop the worldwide web. The British computer scientist wants governments around the world to resist the temptation to spy on people and says that a proposal being considered by the Australian Government to log individual internet data use for up to two years will have little impact on criminals.
TIM BERNERS-LEE, COMPUTER SCIENTIST: If you do snoop on people, if you record, for example, the websites that somebody visits then you're not gonna get the criminals because they are gonna go through - they're gonna use Tor or they're gonna go through some intermediate nodes. They're gonna go to some trouble in order to just obscure it.
JOHN STEWART: Sir Tim Berners-Lee argues that if internet users believe the Government is recording their web history, they'll stop using it and limit the flow of valuable information.
TIM BERNERS-LEE: You will produce a world in which a teenager who really needs to go to an online forum to compare - to get some professional advice or really needs to know whether or not they're suffering from a given disease or wants to understand something about sexuality, medicine, growing up and realises that if they click they will be branded for the next two years as having gone to that site.
JOHN STEWART: He also says storing individual data logs is tricky and governments cannot guarantee that systems won't be hacked.
TIM BERNERS-LEE: That information is so dangerous. You have to think about it as dynamite. You have to think about if it gets away, what you've done is you've prepared a dossier on every person in the country which will allow them, if that dossier's stolen, to be blackmailed. Maybe you have every member of the Australian military will have this little dossier which will allow a foreign power to exert a huge amount of pressure on them.
continued at link...One of the founders of the internet, British computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee,... more
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"Celebrate The World Wide Web’s 20th Birthday — Ask Your Lawmakers To Oppose The Internet Blacklist Bill"
http://blog.demandprogress.org/2011/08/celebrate-the-world-wide-webs-20th-birthday-ask-your-lawmakers-to-oppose-the-internet-blacklist-bill/
"It was twenty years ago this week that Tim Berners-Lee, while working at CERN, put the world’s first website online. It announced his new creation: the World Wide Web. Last year while urging Internet users to sign Demand Progress’s petition against the Internet Blacklist Bill, Berners-Lee wrote this about the principles that underpin his project:
“No person or organization shall be deprived of their ability to connect to others at will without due process of law, with the presumption of innocence until found guilty. Neither governments nor corporations should be allowed to use disconnection from the Internet as a way of arbitrarily furthering their own aims.”
The Internet Blacklist Bill — S.968, formally called the PROTECT IP Act — would violate those principles by allowing the Department of Justice to force search engines, browsers, and service providers to block users’ access to websites that have been accused of facilitating intellectual property infringement — without even giving them a day in court. It would also give IP rights holders a private right of action, allowing them to sue to get sites prevented from operating. Demand Progress’s new mash-up, posted here, explains the bill in more detail.""Celebrate The World Wide Web’s 20th Birthday — Ask Your Lawmakers To... more
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Tim Berners-Lee, the great man credited with the creation of the World Wide Web, has unveiled a public beta version of data.gov.uk.
-- What on Earth is that? --
That, my friend, is a website where the government statistics will be shared with the public.
-- Grrrreat. But why should I care? --
The government has traditionally been pretty secretive when it comes to sharing their date but now, taking a lead from the US, they're now sharing public sector data in a way that makes it much easier for people to find.
-- Like what? --
Data.gov.uk has just under 3,000 data sets available. includes 22 military data sets and even one called Suicide and Open Verdict Deaths in the U.K. Regular Armed Forces. Other data sets are for traffic accidents, air passengers stats, agriculture, school results, etc.
-- But are there apps? If there aren't apps, I'm going postal. --
Yes, there are!
The Telegraph details some of them: "There are 15 “apps” so far, which you can take a look at here (http://current.com/1bib44c). “Our property”, for instance, provides historic house price data from the Land Registry and Registrars of Scotland going back as far as 1995. So you can search your postcode to see recent house sales in your area – helpful for house buyers and sellers, and brilliant for nosey neighbours. Another example (one of Sir Tim’s favourites) is the scraplab effort to map out traffic incidents involving bicycles so cyclists can plan safer routes to work."
-- Phew. Where do I find out more? --
Just click on the links below and remember, take your time. There's no rush.
http://data.gov.uk/
Image: http://www.boingboing.net/timbernerslee.png
More:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/willheaven/100023180/three-cheers-for-sir-tim-berners-lee-and-the-revolutionary-data-gov-uk/Tim Berners-Lee, the great man credited with the creation of the World Wide Web, has... more
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richjm
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added this
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3 years ago
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Sir Tim Berners-Lee is to be given a lifetime-achievement Webby for inventing the World Wide Web in New York on June 8.
"Sir Tim Berners-Lee sealed his place in history with the creation of the Web, but more importantly, he guided its development as a tool for promoting creativity and humanitarian values," said David-Michel Davies, executive director of The Webby Awards.
"It is an honour to pay tribute to a brilliant pioneer responsible for creating the most influential mass medium the world has seen," he added.Sir Tim Berners-Lee is to be given a lifetime-achievement Webby for inventing the... more
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Back in 1989, Tim Berners-Lee was a software consultant working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research outside of Geneva, Switzerland. On March 13 of that year, he submitted a plan to management on how to better monitor the flow of research at the labs.Back in 1989, Tim Berners-Lee was a software consultant working at the European... more
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