The European Union court decision that Google users have the "right to be forgotten" is already causing problems for the search engine. In just a short 48 hours since the ruling was handed down, an ex-politician and convicted pedophile have asked Google to remove links to their stories from the site, a request the court says they must honor.

The politician is planning to run for office once more, and wanted stories about his prior behavior in office (which we can assume was not to the taste of his voters) removed from search. The pedophile has asked links to websites about his conviction to be removed, meaning it would be harder for neighbors and potential landlords to check into his criminal history before inviting the man to a location potentially surrounded by children.

On Data Protection day 2014, Vice-President Reding called for a "data protection compact for Europe" - eight principles that should govern the way data is processed by the public and the private sector.

Two years after the European Commission proposed a major reform of the EU’s data protection rules, Vice-President Reding called for full speed on data protection in 2014, saying "Europe must act decisively to establish a robust data protection framework that can be the gold standard for the world. Otherwise others will move first and impose their standards on us." Speaking about national security programmes and their implications for data protection, Vice-President Reding said it is essential that Europe get its own house in order. "National security should be invoked sparingly.

The Chaos Computer Congress is the largest offline hacker gathering in Europe. Over 9000 people came to Hamburg between Christmas and New Years Eve to attend talks, discuss, meet up with like-minded folk, hack, make and rejoice in the abundance of LEDs.

It being a hacker conference there was a high DIY level. The congress was organized and run by volunteers called Angels, self-organized sessions outnumbered the talks of the main program and groups organized in Assemblies to create a home base in the sea of people. The Congress Center Hamburg building was completely pimped, its CCH logo hacked to read CCC, a temporary night club was built up on the ground floor (with working water canon!) and the congress’ rocket logo came to life in front of the entrance.