"Saatgut Treuhand Verwaltungs GmbH", represented through CEO Mr Dirk Otten earns a BigBrotherAward for collecting data about farmers, for taking thousands of farmers unwilling to give their data to court, for procuring customers’ data from cooperatives and clandestine test-shopping at farmers’ shops. The farmers were suspected by Saatgut Treuhand to use potatos or other crops from their own harvests for next year’s plantings. For establishing a centralised control structure for the collection of fines as a service to the seed industry.

The Government of the state of Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen), represented through the state's Prime Minister Mr Christian Wulff earns a BigBrotherAward for destroying the data protection authority in Lower Saxony. The supervision of data protection in the economy is to be handed over to Lower Saxony's Ministry of the Interior as of 1 Jan 2006. This undermines proceedings by the EU-Commission recently opened against Germany for breach of contract through disregard of the EU data protection directive. The EU directive requires total independence of data protection supervision.

The Generalstaatsanwaltschaft (High Office of Public Prosecution) of the state of Schleswig-Holstein, represented through Mr Erhard Rex earns a BigBrotherAward for the extensive search for witnesses (who were then treated like suspects) through locating mobile phones. This is the first massive search of mobile phone cells. Phone companies were forced to disclose complete connection data for a whole region. Data protectors of the state of Schleswig-Holstein who wanted to investigate this case were denied access to the related police files.

The BigBrotherAward in the category Technology goes to a number of very eager surveillance fetishists for the creeping degradation of citizens to objects of continual compulsory observation and playing down the consequences of ubiquitous surveillance.

The organising committee for the soccer World Cup within the German football association (Deutscher Fussballbund, DFB) - represented by Mr Franz Beckenbauer earns a BigBrotherAward for the inquisitorial questions asked in ticket application forms, for their plans of sharing customer data with FIFA and its sponsors, and for the use of RFID spychips in the tickets and thus the attempt to make this surveillance technology acceptable - directly benefiting a World Cup sponsor (RFID producer Philips).

The Minister of the Interior of the state of Hesse, Mr Volker Bouffier, earns a BigBrotherAward for the "preventive" locating and tapping of mobile phones; for DNA-analysing child delinquents under 14 for use in future prosecution; for authorising Hessian police to scan car licence numbers even when there is no suspicion of a crime; for using video surveillance while checking identities of members of the public.