Berners-Lee calls for ‘ordinary people’ to protect web

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, has thrown his weight behind a new campaign to encourage people across the world to fight back against online censorship and surveillance.

In a letter to the Financial Times, Sir Tim wrote that “now is the time for citizens to mobilize to demand that governments and companies respect and protect our basic freedoms online.” The letter marks the launch of a campaign called the Web We Want, which Sir Tim has set up with a coalition of civil society organizations including Free Press and the Center for Democracy and Technology. “Our aim is that citizens in every country will help to create a national bill of rights for the internet – so that we can all build the web we want, and freely use its power to create the world we want,” he wrote.