The US government has betrayed the internet. We need to take it back

The NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract. We engineers built the internet – and now we have to fix it

• Explaining the latest NSA revelations – Q&A

• 
• • Bruce Schneier
  • The Guardian, Thursday 5 September 2013 20.04 BST
  • Jump to comments (720)

'Dismantling the surveillance state won't be easy. But whatever happens, we're going to be breaking new ground.' Photograph: Bob Sacha/Corbis

Government and industry have betrayed the internet, and us.

By subverting the internet at every level to make it a vast, multi-layered and robust surveillance platform, the NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract. The companies that build and manage our internet infrastructure, the companies that create and sell us our hardware and software, or the companies that host our data: we can no longer trust them to be ethical internet stewards.

This is not the internet the world needs, or the internet its creators envisioned. We need to take it back./.../