Privacy International global privacy invaders

Privacy International ran the first International Big Brothers Awards ceremony this week, focussing attention on what it called the most invasive companies, projects, officials, and governments at the ‘Computers, Freedom and Privacy’ conference in Montreal. A ‘special award’ for the ‘Lifetime Menace’ was also announced.  The detailed announcement is here:

PI's ‘Big Brother Awards’ have been running for nearly ten years, with events run in eighteen countries around the world. Government institutions and companies have been named and shamed as privacy invaders in a variety of countries and contexts.

This year was the first time that Privacy International ran an international event to identify the greatest invaders around the world. The event was hosted by ‘the pope’, as presented by Simon Davies in full regalia. Previous hosts include ‘Dr. Evil’ and ‘The Queen of England’.

Nominees and Winners

After reviewing the variety of nominations received from around the world, Privacy International and leading international privacy experts selected the following nominees and winners in the following categories:

Most invasive company

Nominees

• Google, for their retention practices and their purchase of Doubleclick, an on-line marketing and profiling firm
• Choicepoint, for their vast databases of personal data, sold to nearly anyone who wishes to pay
• SWIFT, the international banking co-operative for sharing personal financial transactions with the U.S. government
• Booz Allen Hamilton, the international consultancy, for taking the knowledge and contacts of their senior executives, mostly from U.S. intelligence agencies, to sell and share their experiences with firms and governments around the world

Winner: Choicepoint

Worst Public Official

Nominees

• Tony Blair, Prime Minister of Britain, for his relentless work over ten years to expand the UK into the greatest surveillance society amongst democratic nations
• Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, for returning the surveillance policies of his nation to the age of the Cold War
• Stewart Baker, former general counsel for the National Security Agency and now undersecretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security, behind and at the forefront of most disastrous U.S. surveillance policies, most recently the EU-U.S. agreement on Passenger Name Records transfers
• Alberto Gonzales, current Attorney General for the U.S., for pushing expansive interpretations of the U.S. Constitution in order to create new powers for the Bush Administration without Congressional authorisation and judicial oversight

Winner: Stewart Baker

Most Heinous Government

Nominees

• China, for implementing even greater surveillance policies and continues its oppression of various groups, and moves towards the international stage with the Beijing Olympics with additional surveillance schemes
• The U.S., for leading the world down the path of greater surveillance and its disastrous influence on policy and technology
• The United Kingdom, for being the greatest surveillance society amongst democratic nations, rivaling only Malaysia, China and Russia as it also leads other countries across the EU down its same path
• Tunisia, for being stupid enough to have invasive and despotic practices even while hosting a UN summit on the information society, and then oppressing guests and groups from around the world while in the public eye
• The European Union, for pretending to be founded upon a bedrock of civil liberties and fundamental rights but then spending decades establishing invasive policies without any democratic oversight

Winner: The United Kingdom (for more information please see Taking Liberties documentary (off-site))

Most Appalling Project or Technology

Nominees

• U.S. Border Policy, and most recently the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, for fingerprinting visitors from around the world while hoisting fingerprinting and ID card programmes upon citizens around the world, including Americans
• International Civil Aviation Organization, a UN agency, for implementing a variety of invasive policies behind closed doors, including the ‘biometric passport’ and passenger data transfer-deals
• India's Ministry for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions for requiring government employees to disclose their menstrual cycles on job appraisal forms
• the CCTV industry, for promoting a technologically ‘effective’ policy around the world despite all the evidence to the contrary

Winner: The International Civil Aviation Organization

Lifetime Menace Award

Nominees

• The Biometrics Industry, for selling a limited technology to governments and public institutions around the world, promising much while delivering very little except for minimisation of personal privacy
• The Military Industrial Complex, for being behind almost every invasive surveillance policy around the world, where we showed the example of General Dynamics, contractor to a variety of governments, who own companies such as Anteon (UK) who in turn own ‘Vericool’ (UK) who is responsible for selling surveillance technologies to schools that want to fingerprint their students to verify class registries, library privileges, and cafeteria purchases
• The Intellectual Property Industry, for promoting and pushing invasive policies around the world in order to keep track of the habits of on-line users to pursue their agenda of ‘protecting’ content
• Communitarianism and the proponents of the ‘Common Good’, because every bad policy around the world is justified based on the philosophy that is good for society and the individual must sacrifice his or her selfish rights in favour of the needs of the many

Winner: The ‘Common Good’

Privacy International said winners were given the classic BBA award (shown above), a golden statue of a boot stamping upon a human head, as promised by George Orwell in 1984 on a vision for the future.

I wonder who accepted on behalf of the “Common Good”?