Increasing technological capabilities have given rise to unprecedented amounts of information being retained and made available. Currently, individuals lack control over distribution,

expiration and quality of shared personal data. This talk will discuss technical, political and social challenges of privacy enhancing technologies and the need for technical solutions that are free software.

Dr. Christian Grothoff is an assistant professor at the University of Denver (DU). His research interests span programming languages, software engineering and computer security. He is the maintainer of several GNU projects, including GNUnet, GNU\'s framework for secure peer-to-peer networking.