Abstract
The Web is here to stay – yet it still divides opinion. There are optimists, like the Mozilla community and like the betterplace lab team, that believe the Internet can be a powerful force for good in our society – by making information and services available to all, by letting citizens speak, be heard, and hold the powerful to account. But this is not the full picture. Throughout the Internet’s relatively short history, we have had to contend with a series of menaces threatening to shackle or undermine this public resource. At one time we were suffocating under an avalanche of spam emails and pop-ups. Today we’re asking how we can protect individuals’ privacy when every click may be monitored by data mining corporations and state surveillance agents. This report is both a contribution to this nascent discussion, and it shows the current state of knowledge of, and current opinions of, groups which will be absolutely key participants.
