Blog: Berners-Lee: Semantic Web Will Have Privacy Built-In

Berners-Lee: Semantic Web Will Have Privacy Built-In
ZDNet UK (03/12/09) Espiner, Tom

World Wide Web Consortium director Sir Tim Berners-Lee says the Semantic Web will improve online privacy protection by allowing Internet users to control who can access their data. Researchers have warned that the combination of personal information and a semantic Web could lead to privacy problems, including increased data mining. However, Berners-Lee says that teams working on the Semantic Web project are working to ensure that privacy principles are built into the Semantic Web's architecture. "The Semantic Web project is developing systems which will answer where data came from and where it's going to--the system will be architectured for a set of appropriate uses," he says. Berners-Lee also says the Semantic Web will be based on the principle that people who make a Web request for information held by third parties, such as a company or a government agency, will be able to see all the data those organizations will keep on them. The Semantic Web project will include accountable data-mining components, which enable people to know who is mining data on them, and it is exploring making the Web adhere to privacy preferences set by the users.

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