'Insidious spying'
The British inventor of the World Wide Web accused Western governments of hypocrisy in spying on the Internet.
Tim Berners-Lee, a London-born computer scientist who invented the Web in 1989, said the West was involved in "insidious" online spying that could change the way normal people use their computers.
The United States and Britain are facing domestic and international outrage after a security contractor leaked documents that exposed previously secret US and British programs to monitor on the Internet.
"In the Middle East, people have been given access to the Internet but they have been snooped on and then they have been jailed," Berners-Lee, 58, told The Times newspaper in an interview.
"It can be easy for people in the West to say 'Oh, those nasty governments should not be allowed access to spy'. But it's clear that developed nations are seriously spying on the Internet," he said, adding that the revelations about US and British spying could alter the way people use the Internet, especially for younger generations who can use it in intimate ways.
Reuters
(China Daily 06/27/2013 page9)
