The Trump administration’s rollback on Obama-era internet privacy rules is “disgusting” and “appalling,” says the man who created the world wide web.
Tim Berners-Lee spoke out against the repeal of the Federal Communications Commission’s privacy rules Tuesday, soon after being declared the recipient of the 2016 ACM A.M. Turing Award ― a $1 million accolade dubbed the “Nobel Prize of computing.”
House Republicans voted on March 28 to allow internet service providers to share customers’ personal information (including browsing history) without their consent. President Donald Trump signed the bill into law Monday.
But Berners-Lee was far from happy.
“The attitude is really appalling,” the 61-year-old English computer scientist said in an interview with British newspaper The Guardian. “That bill was a disgusting bill because when we use the web, we are so vulnerable.”
Berners-Lee, who launched the world’s very first website in December 1990, noted how “when people use the web what they do is really, really intimate.”
“You have the right to go to a doctor in privacy where it’s just between you and the doctor,” he said. “And similarly, you have to be able to go to the web.”
Real the full Guardian interview here.
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