Some of the biggest names in the industry have signaled that web privacy is set to get a lot tougher as governments pile pressure on internet providers for access to information.



Marissa Mayer, the current president and CEO of Yahoo, described it as a "pendulum swing" at the World Economic Forum in Davos.



"I see a pendulum swinging back and forth in public sentiment, where you saw (U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden) swing that pendulum very heavily towards privacy. Now with some of the recent issues that have arisen, that pendulum has swung back towards security," she said during a seminar at the event.



Following on from this month's terrorist attacks, the U.K. government has implied that intelligence agencies should be given greater powers to break encrypted communications to nullify the threat of terrorism.



The discussions on Thursday revolved around where governmental control should be granted and how it extends to countries that want access to hit back at dissenting voices. Yahoo demand that government data requests be made through lawful means and for lawful purposes. It received 6,791 data requests from the U.S. government in the first six months of 2014 and has seen numbers fall but Mayer's words suggested that a change is on the horizon.



Meanwhile, Michael Fries, the president, CEO, and vice chairman of Liberty Global said that internet privacy today was resembling a "train wreck." He said that government access was not optional or voluntary, but obligatory.



"We do have lawful intercept relationships with the governments in every (country) in which we operate," he said. He added that Liberty Global had, however, the obligation to give some sense of proportionality to the data requests.