Freedom of the internet ‘under threat’

The inventor of the world wide web said he is fighting a growing battle to keep the internet out of the hands of powerful people who threaten its freedom.

Tim Berners-Lee said he is up against big companies which want to tweak laws to have “tremendous” control over the lives of web users.

The internet has come under increasing scrutiny surrounding privacy and censorship following revelations of data gathering by government security services across the world and the EU’s decision to allow individuals ask search engines to remove links to information about them.