Tim Berners-Lee warns against website snooping

Tim Berners-Lee, whose proposal for an information management system at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN 20 years ago led eventually to the World Wide Web, said Internet users governments and corporations tracking the sites they visit to build up a picture of their activities. "That form of snooping I think is really important to avoid," he said. Technology now being developed will make it easier to decide who can see material one posts on the Web, and in what circumstances. For instance people may not want prospective employers to see an album of holiday photos, he said. Lee is making sure the Semantic Web will respect the privacy of online communications and allow people to control who can use their data. The Semantic Web, an ongoing project overseen by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), seeks to enable the Web to intelligently interpret what people are seeking when they search the Net.