Governments Will Close Off Open Internet: Expert

""In 20 years, the Internet will be more like TV," said Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School and an influential advocate of digital rights. "It won't be a global conversation as it's existed for the past 20 years."

"How many people in this room still blog regularly?" she asked. "I don't. Now I put it all on Facebook. How many still run their own email servers? I don't. Now I use Gmail."

But those trends lead to more centralization, Granick said, which it turn makes it easier for governments to monitor communications.

"This is the golden age of surveillance," Granick said. "We have governments leaning on companies to hand over encryption data. We're soon going to see data-retention obligations [placed on Internet companies].""