Cloud has been a revolution. We access our data wherever we are via web interface, apps on mobile devices or desktop and share and communicate via services like twitter, flickr, imgur, facebook, pinterest... The Cloud makes life easier and more fun.

Is this data available to government? Absolutely. Can advertisers mine it? Oh yes. Is it available to anybody with money? Probably. Can hackers get to it? Not unlikely. It is all in one or a few places: easy to demand access to for the government, to be bought by companies or stolen by thieves.

Think about this: The government knows your political opinions. Your insurance knows your medical history and what you do in your free time. Your bank knows you didn't finish your study. A potential employer knows if your wife wants to get pregnant.

This is not how the internet was designed. It was meant to be a place where data was everywhere, not stored in a few locations. Federation would be the norm, not the exception.

We need to find and build solutions to get our privacy back, bring our data home. I will present one such a solution: ownCloud. ownCloud

With ownCloud you can sync & share your files, calendar, contacts and more. Access your data from all your devices, on an open platform you can extend and modify. You determine how your private data is shared. Your data – under your control.