Winners Of The Big Brother Awards Germany Announced

The winners of this years Big Brother Awards Germany have been announced this Friday at a ceremony in Bielefeld. The Big Brother Awards – the academy awards for data leeches – is a competition held in many countries which honors people, companies and organisations with outstanding performances in the erosion of privacy or surveillance of citizens.

And the winners are:

Communication: Brigitte Zypries, Federal Minister of Justice – “for a bill that will introduce the retention of all telecommunications connection data in Germany.”

Consumer Protection: Marriott, Hyatt and Intercontinental (representing hotel chains) – “for their collection and centralised storing of critical personal information of customers without their knowledge.”

Economy: Deutsche Bahn – “for their systematic endeavours to make anonymous travelling practically impossible.”

Government Authorities and Administration: Monika Harms, Germany’s Federal Prosecutor – “for her measures against opponents of the G8 summit in May this year.” Monika Harms also won the Audience Award.

Politics: Peer Steinbrück, Federal Minister of Finance – “for introducing a life-long tax identification number for all residents of the Federal Republic of Germany.”

Regional: Municipal Authority for Education and Sports of the City of Hamburg – “for introducing a central register for all pupils and students with the (further) purpose of finding foreign families without a residence permit.”

Technology: PTV – “for their system for individual rating of car insurances with … a device that records routes and driving behaviour in a car and transmits these data to the insurance company.”

Workplace: Novartis – “for spying on sales personnel by detectives and deliberately breaching promises of anonymity in employee surveys.”

The Big Brother Awards Germany are organised by Bielefeld based FoeBuD.

(This article originally was written for blognation Germany. Since blognation is gone I have reposted it here)