Absolute Internet traffic increases at 20% -40% every year and the amount of absolute bandwidth utilized by the encrypted traffic is doubled in this period.

According to the Global Internet Phenomena report, published by Sandvine, a Canadian broadband management company, the amount of absolute Internet traffic increases significantly each year. The wake of surveillance revelations leaked by Edward Snowden became reason that bandwidth utilized by the encrypted traffic has been increased at 2 times in North America and at 4 in Latin America. A new report released by Sandvine indicates that BitTorrent loses its popularity in the USA but it continues its growth in Europe. The encrypted traffic growth was recorded in 2014 compared with last year.

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.