30C3 Day 1 First Impressions

Getting from Northern England to Hamburg on Boxing day is by no means as easy as it should be. For a start there aren’t any trains. It was was worth it because the first day of 30C3 has lived up to the promise of one of the most eventful years in the history of the internet, digital rights, and privacy. The conference opening talk called it by reminding us all that we have woken up from a bad dream to find we are living a nightmare. A nightmare that goes beyond simply loosing are privacy to mass global surveillance. We have lost control of the internet, and the very technology and protocols that it is built on. Can it be won back or have we lost it forever to a small number of massive multinationals and a growing number of government agencies?