Onze nieuwe stagiair Huw Roberts onderzoekt hoe we ervoor kunnen zorgen dat jij je internetverbinding kunt delen met anderen, zonder dat je meteen door je provider wordt afgesloten als die anderen daar misbruik van maken. We stellen je graag voor aan deze rasechte Brit.

“My background as a Politics student has led me to closely follow the legislative tendency throughout Europe to encroach upon personal privacy in the name of security. In the face of fervent discussions over defeating terrorists and allowing business to flourish, the importance of privacy in securing fundamental rights has often found itself sidelined. It is a desire to help with the defence of these liberties which pushed me towards both my studies in Politics, and also my involvement in Bits of Freedom.

During my two months at Bits of Freedom I have chosen to focus my project on an issue which is at the core of modern freedom of expression and information, the internet. I often found myself reading stories of multinational companies taking business owners to court over copyright infringements on their open WiFi, or police raids at homes hosting Tor exit nodes. One of the major reasons for this is a lack of technical understanding, leaving many internet access providers hostile to the idea of network sharing. For this reason I have decided to focus my report on how internet access providers, governments, and developers can lessen the risks and false impressions aroused by the sharing of one’s residential internet. It is my hope that a greater knowledge on this topic will lead to improved safeguards, and more importantly greater acceptance of acts such as hosting an open home WiFi network, or running a Tor node.”