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I don't think anybody would argue now that the Internet isn't becoming a major factor in our lives. However, it's very new to us. Newsreaders still feel it is worth a special and rather worrying mention if, for instance, a crime was planned by people 'over the Internet.'

I think there is a possible future where maybe we do just take a hard turn away from the Internet and we do start valuing our privacy again.

The Internet is a wonderful thing, but it opens the door to many crimes, so you have to stay ahead of it.

The Internet has made us richer, freer, connected and informed in ways its founders could not have dreamt of. It has also become a vector of attack, espionage, crime and harm.

Like almost every major infrastructure, the Internet can be abused and its users harmed. We must, however, take great care that the cure for these ills does not do more harm than good. The benefits of the open and accessible Internet are nearly incalculable, and their loss would wreak significant social and economic damage.

I've spent my life defending the Net, and I do feel that if we don't fight online crime, we are running a risk of losing it all.

I fear that light touch regulations that have allowed the Internet to prosper will now be replaced by a heavy hand that stifles innovation and does not adapt well to change. The Internet is not broken.

In terms of dangers, such as viruses, fraud or identity theft, I don't think we were thinking about that at all when we got started. If we had been worried about that, the net might have been better today, but we might not have even got there.

Look at electricity in human history - it took a few decades for electricity to really revolutionize the American economy. And the Internet will be the same. At some point in the future, we will arrive at a new era of low-hanging fruit.

The benefits of our increasingly digital lives have been accompanied by new dangers, and we have been forced to consider how criminals and terrorists might use advances in technology to their advantage.