You see that little camera on your desktop or laptop computer? Well, some creep from far, far away may well be looking at YOU through it.

On the eve of Independence Day, a who's who of computer experts say that government control, consumer distrust and corporate greed threaten the future of the Internet as we know it.

In life, Aaron Swartz was a force in creating today's Web, helping write game-changing code in his early teens before turning his attentions to Internet activism.

Mahabir Pun is what the Internet Society calls a "global connector". His perseverance in leveraging the internet to improve lives in remote corners of Nepal saw him inducted into the society's Internet Hall of Fame at a ceremony held in Hong Kong in April. 

Whatever you do, don't ask Netscape cofounder Eric Bina how he feels about inventing the browser ... or the web ... or the Internet. 

Linus Torvalds has been given the 2014 IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award, 20 years after the release of the Linux kernel 1.0 that he developed as a University of Helsinki student in his native country of Finland. 

Long known for its buoyant property market and expertise as a financial services hub, Hong Kong could burnish its credentials as a "technology town" after the staging of two events that celebrate the past and point to the future of the internet.

IRELAND HAS ITS own member of the Internet Hall of Fame – Dr Dennis Jennings, a physicist, IT expert, Internet pioneer, investor, and company director.

For about a decade that ended in the mid-1990s, the fledgling Internet ran out of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan.