BigBrotherAwards 2000

Rena Tangens is an artist and a co-founder of Digitalcourage. When she gets her teeth into a topic, she doesn't let go quickly. Her knowledge goes deep – and she knows how to anticipate tomorrow in today's world with yesterday's experiences.

Rolf Gössner is a German lawyer, publicist, parliamentary advisor and civil rights activist. He is also a member of the German NGO “International League for Human Rights” (German name: Internationale Liga für Menschenrechte, ILFM). ILFM regards human rights as undivisible, unalienable, and universal. In their view the term “human rights” equally includes protections and participation rights on the civil-political, social, and cultural levels – irrespective of origin, gender, skin colour, religion, or politicial views. Rolf Gössner has been part of the BigBrotherAwards from the very start. After more than 20 years he retired from the jury in 2021.

padeluun is one of Digitalcourage’s founders. He experimented with public networked communication as early as the late 1980s. Together with Rena Tangens, he developed concepts of how communication can succeed – and failed grandiosely in the face of the concentrated financial power of the “Internet corporations,” which were able to destroy communication with a lot of money but, clueless as they were, were unable to build anything useful.

jockel is a social pedagogue and journalist and has been committed to civil rights since 1976. In 2000, jockel gave the award speech for Deutsche Bahn together with padeluun.

Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft (FITUG) creates connections to the virtual world of new media and data networks. The objectives of the association are to promote the integration of new media into society, to educate people about the techniques, risks and dangers of these media, and to safeguard human rights and consumer protection in computer networks. Patrick Goltzsch was a jury member in 2000–2002.

Thilo Weichert is a former data protection commissioner of the state of Schleswig-Holstein, a board member of Deutsche Vereinigung für Datenschutz (DVD – an independent civil rights association that promotes data protection issues in Germany and Europe), and a data protection expert at Netzwerk Datenschutzexpertise.

When Sebastian Lisken joined the Digitalcourage IT admin team in 2017, he had already been a volunteer for many years as proofreader, translator and interpreter between German and British English. His voice is often heard in simultaneous interpretations for the Big Brother Awards and Chaos Computer Club events. He is both liked and feared for friendly pedantry in terms of language and logic. His other functions for Digitalcourage include networking with Europan contacts and software development.