Since the year 2000, the German BigBrotherAwards are presented to companies, institutions and persons who act in a prominent and sustained way to invade people's privacy, sell personal data or use it in ways that violate the original limitation of purpose. The BigBrotherAwards are an international project. In 19 countries so far, these awards have highlighted schemings that threaten people and democracy.
The German BigBrotherAwards are organised by Digitalcourage.
Alvar Freude
Many companies trading on the internet are including vague or very wide-ranging statements in the privacy sections of their terms and conditions. Apple, for instance, stipulate the permission to pass on customer details “in case this should be necessary for national security, the legal process or other public interests”. If any data should then be transferred, Apple won’t have to worry: Some “public interest” can surely be found! We can only hope that this trend is not going to spread.
Florian Glatzner
It is perfectly normal to identify oneself by showing one’s ID card, for instance when renting a movie, for copying keys, registering in online communities or at airport check-in counters. But in recent years a trend has emerged that ID cards are not just verified for identification but a copy is also made. What is done with these copies, how, where, and for how long they are kept, is mostly not revealed. In most cases, it is perfectly sufficient if the relevant institution simply records the name and address and the fact that an identification has been shown. You should therefore object if someone intends to copy your ID without your explicit consent.
Frank Rosengart
The police in the federal state of Brandenburg have publicly asked for information, using recorded video material, about what clearly seem to be underage persons suspected of stealing the school rucksack of a co-student. While previously there had to be a severe crime before such a public search was conducted, inhibitions seem to have come down to a disturbingly low level.
Rolf Gössner
The Ministry of the Interior are planning a centralised listening operation available to all security authorities at the national as well as the federal states’ level, based at the Federal Administration Authority (Bundesverwaltungsamt, BVA) — in violation of the federalism principle as well as the constitutional tenet of separating the police and secret services. The BVA is thus expanded into a technological hub for German telecommunications surveillance and into yet another intersection between police forces and intelligence services. With this centralisation and informational networking, which has been pursued for a considerable time on several levels, comes the threat of further concentrations of power in the security apparatus that is becoming almost impossible to control.
Florian Glatzner
“Do you find it appalling if someone tries to force their interests with violence? Do you believe that life in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was not that bad? Do things such as tarot cards, crystals or mandalas help you take the right decisions when faced with difficult life choices?” — These are just some of the questions asked of 3.000 recipients of long-term social welfare (secondary unemployment support, named “Hartz IV” after the government advisor who became synonymous with welfare reform in Germany in 2004) during a study conducted by the “Association for Innovation Research and Consultation” (Gesellschaft für Innovationsforschung und Beratung, GIB) on behalf of the Hamburg unemployment administration. Asked about the sense of asking these questions that probe deep into the privacy of the surveyed persons, even GIB’s director Carsten Becker could not come up with an explanation. But it is easy to imagine how such information in unauthorised hands could cause serious damage.
Florian Glatzner
On their website, the Federal Criminal Office in Wiesbaden (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA) featured information about the extreme left organisation “militant group” (militante gruppe) and then stored the IP addresses of surfers accessing that web page. But if that wasn’t enough: in 417 cases the BKA then tried to find the identity of these web visitors. The hope was to identify members of the “militant group”, explained the BKA. Innocent people get arbitrarily caught in a dragnet and must endure disconcerting enquiries — just because they were surfing the web site of a federal authority! if this is enough to justify police enquiries, is there any way left to behave insuspiciously?
Karin Schuler
Data protection can be so inconvenient! Especially if one can earn good money by forwarding address changes to a subsidiary of Germany’s ex-state postal service, Deutsche Post Adress. Of course, having to ask for consent about this data sharing is simply a nuisance. Quelle, a leading German mail order company, simply gives customers four weeks to object to the transmission of the new address (and it is not made clear to which purpose) to the address trader. “Opt out” is what they say in new-speak — an injury to data protection, we call it!
Frank Rosengart
Polar Electronic, makers of wrist watches with fitness trainer functionality (pulse, step counter, etc), are offering an online service to their customers where they can register an account and store a personal training profile. Health insurers would be grateful takers of such data, should the customer profiles ever leak out. As a small consolation, to participate is not a requirement for operating the device.
Florian Glatzner
The education office (Bildungsbüro) in the district of Herford, North Rhine-Westphalia uses a so-called “job navigator” as the basis for its advisory service. This computer program creates personality profiles of pupils, compares them with the requirement profiles for different professions, and produces job recommendations as a result. At closer inspection, the contract between the district and the “job navigator”’s supplier contains a startling passage: the address data of promising job navigator users was to be sold to employers and other “interested companies”, for a price of 200 Euro. But this was not clearly communicated to the pupils, nor where they asked for their consent to the data being shared.
Rolf Gössner
Police forces offering forms for crime reporting in so-called “online” or “internet offices” are leading to several cases of police measures being conducted against innocent people, and thus to severe impairments of basic rights. Since the police in the federal state of Lower Saxony installed an internet portal for anonymous name-calling, which was mentioned in a Note of Disapproval at the 2004 BigBrotherAwards, such simplified reporting facilities have been expanded across Germany, regardless of their susceptibility to serious abuse and denunciations.
Karin Schuler
Since the 2004 BigBrotherAwards, it seems that nothing has really changed at the Federal Labour Market Authority, or “Employment Agency” (Bundesagentur für Arbeit). Benefits or personal rights — that is the choice that recipients of long-term social welfare (“Hartz IV”) are still presented with. The most extreme experiences that people in need of state support are having to endure are raid-like apartment checks, anonymous denunciations and months of surveillance. Which makes one almost happy if the agency limits itself to “just” sharing one’s data with a market and social research institute for a survey, or asking for comprehensive account details in order to assess individual requirements.
Translations for the reprimands are not yet available, sorry.
For the first time, we introduce a positive award this year. The “Julia and Winston Award” was named after the “rebellious” main characters in George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984”, from which the “Big Brother” concept is also taken. The award is to honour persons who have taken an extraordinary stand against surveillance and data collection mania.
The winner of the first Julia and Winston Award is Edward Snowden.
In Berlin, the German parliament (Bundestag) has established a committee of inquiry to investigate the NSA scandal. It is strange that the majority of the committee do not want to invite the person who uncovered this scandal. The committe’s CDU/CSU1 members talk about Snowden as if he had an infectious disease. And there is hardly any objection from SPD members. That is gross ingratitude.
The man has already said all he has to say, the argument goes; so there is no need to question him again. That is premature consideration of evidence, which is forbidden in all areas of law and in the German parliament as well. Snowden offers critical evidence, as everyone knows. The real reason why nobody wants to invite him is this: Chancellor Angela Merkel fears a peeved and harsh reaction from her hosts during her US visit in May. That is more than just fainthearted. The Chancellor has sworn in her oath of office to protect the German people from harm. Protecting from harm – that entails taking action against the harm inflicted by the NSA. Instead, the German government acts as if that Snowden, not the US, was the injuring party.
Edward Snowden is an enlightener. He uncovered the global US inquisition and had to take refuge from the Grand Inquisitor. Personally, he has gained no benefits from his whistleblowing, only disadvantages. The only benefit is for the integrity of the rule of law in Western democracies – well, it could be a benefit if those democracies used the scandal as an incentive to reign in their secret services.
So Snowden is not just an enlightener, he is also a motivator. He deserves better than a shaky and temporary asylum in Russia. The Americans are pursuing him as if he was the reincarnated Bin Laden. But he is just a single refugee, a textbook case of a refugee. So how should, how must Germany act towards Edward Snowden? Most of all, with gratitude! Snowden deserves protection and support. He is a classic case of a refugee.
We should, indeed we must give Edward Snowden a stable permit of residence in Germany. We should and must offer him safe passage. All this is legally possible. Instead, the politicians of our “grand coalition” act as if the United States’ power were a legislative force. Germany needs enlightenment about the comprehensive US eavesdropping. Enlightenment is the way out of self-inflicted immaturity.
Snowden’s actions may be punishable in the US, due to violations of US law; but what is truly criminal are the circumstances and the machinations that he is denouncing. Snowden has acted against US secrecy regulations. Does that make him a traitor? No. The people who call him a traitor have betrayed basic rights themselves. Snowden has given emergency aid to the democratic state under the rule of law.
His actions deserve recognition from the judiciary and the state, in Germany as well as the United States. He has kickstarted a debate that will hopefully lead to the democratic state protecting itself from the threat constituted by the NSA attacks. He may not really need a German medal; that would not sustain him. But he needs protection and support.
“Unhappy the land that has no heroes!” says Galileo’s scholar Andrea Sarti in Bertolt Brecht’s play. So America can consider itself lucky to have someone like Snowden. But Galilei’s response to Sarti is this: “No. Unhappy the land that needs a hero”. That is true as well.
Snowden is a symbol for courageous resistance by an individual against a powerful state system. He is a tiny David that stood up against a super Goliath. Snowden has resisted, and he continues to do so until today.
Resistance is a word that people associate with rebellion against a dictatorial regime. But resistance is also a necessity in a democracy, even under the rule of law. Resistance only has a different name in a democracy: it is called dissent, civil courage, standing upright – or simply, Edward Snowden.
If dissent is penalised: dissidents hazard the consequences. They do so to instigate change, to eliminate deficits and injustice. Arthur Kaufmann, the late Philosopher of Law, once called resistance in a democracy “the small resistance”. This small resistance had to be offered “to make the large resistance unnecessary”. But sometimes this so-called small resistance is in fact a very large one. That is the case with Edward Snowden. His resistance fully involves the physical and psychological existence.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
The award comes with an endowment of one million – not one million Euro, though. Digitalcourage will distribute one million stickers with Edward Snowden’s image to demand that he must be given asylum in Germany. The stickers can be ordered at no charge in the Digitalcourage shop. We encourage people to display these stickers in large numbers and in prominent places, to photograph the stickers and spread our campaign online as well, using the hashtag #Snowden and the
1 The CDU and CSU (Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union) are Germany’s major conservative parties. They are “sister” parties, with the CSU operating in the Federal State of Bavaria and the CDU in the other 15 Federal States.
The South Korean electronics manufacturer LG receives the BigBrotherAward in the Consumer Protection category because the “smart” TV sets they sell transmitted detailed information about what people were watching to the firm’s HQ in South Korea, via the Internet. With the help of such information, so-called metadata, one can find out the most intimate details about individual people. The LG devices thus invaded the private lives of unsuspecting people.
The full text of this award speech is not yet available, sorry.
The BigBrotherAward 2014 in the Workplace category goes to RWE Vertrieb AG (RWE Germany’s second-largest energy utility company, and RWE Vertrieb is its sales subsidiary).
The company makes subcontractors use a surveillance software by “Verint Systems”. This software can produce a continuous record of conversations and desktop activities without the workers’ knowledge. This is a representative award for all companies that make use of recording technologies to evaluate call-center workers. And, by the way: Verint Systems also produces monitoring technology for secret services such as the NSA.
The full text of this award speech is not yet available, sorry.
We can tell others a lot about ourselves in conversations. What really strips us naked, though, is our metadata. They tell others what we think, plan, and do.
The full text of this award speech is not yet available, sorry.
The BigBrotherAward 2014 in the “Business” Category goes to CSC (Computer Sciences Corporation).
The company is currently working on commissions by 10 Federal German Ministries on security-related projects, such as the electronic identity card, the De-Mail project for exchanging legal electronic documents, and the nation-wide firearms registry. At the same time, the parent company functions as the external IT department of US secret services, and it has organised rendition flights to torture prisons for the CIA.
The full text of this award speech is not yet available, sorry.
The BigBrotherAward 2014 in the “Technology” Category goes to the Spies in our Cars.
Normally we like to call those responsible for violating our privacy by name. But in this case it is difficult, because car manufacturers, suppliers and the legislature are currently so busy in creating an all-encompassing surveillance of road users that we cannot consider the parts in isolation. And, not least, some of the technologies described here are not yet ready for mass production. For these reasons, we give this award for the entire planned undertaking, in order to emphasise the worrying tendencies.
Let’s start with the partially good news. The European distress call system “e-Call”, also much criticised from a data protection perspective, which can autonomously make an emergency call via its own SIM card in case of an accident, is not designed to become a data leech – at least according to a EU directive. Their SIM cards are not supposed to be logged into the mobile phone network and thus create a continuous trace of data. It is however at the car manufacturers’ discretion to activate further services rather than the pure “e-Call” function. In this case the device would operate like an ordinary mobile phone. Driver’s should therefore ask very precise questions when buying a new car.
There are other developments in the automotive industry that are very worrying from a privacy perspective. Coming to us from the USA is a new discussion about mandatory accident data recorders (black boxes), which in case of an accident record relevant parameters, such as speed, acceleration/deceleration, turn indicators, etc. Here in Germany we are sceptical about such an obligation, not least because of the implications for surveillance, creating a “transparent driver”. But hardly anyone is aware of the fact that such black boxes are already present in every recent car. For example, airbag control units of almost all manufacturers record the parameters that are relevant for setting off the airbag. This serves as an insurance for the manufacturer against claims of having unnecessarily triggered the device.
This kind of data recorder can give rise to a problem for the driver: in case of an accident (or possibly even in case of a severe violation of traffic rules), police can impound the vehicle, including the control unit, and read out the stored data. This would effectively circumvent the right to refuse to give evidence. At the very least the driver should be made aware of the existence of this black box.
Other systems beside the airbag control unit also record numerous parameters that may give away information about driving behaviour, from the engine control unit to the central locking system. As soon as the car is connected to the maintenance computer at an authorised repair shop, the manufacturer will “hoover up” all sorts of technical data from the on-board computers. The car owner will not be informed of this, let alone asked for explicit permission. Quite the contrary: modern cars cannot be repaired without these analysis computers, and some manufacturers even keep the service record as a database on a centralised server. There is the danger that even personalised data may make its way from the car to the repair shop. Car manufacturers quite naturally view these data as “theirs”, as emphasised by Volkswagen CEO Winterkorn.
As a driver myself, I disagree. It seems like I will have something to discuss on my next visit to the repair shop.
From a privacy perspective, new components of on-board entertainment and navigation systems constitute a dangerous conglomerate. The traditional car radio is no more, especially in high-priced cars:
Instead of developing systems in-house, manufacturers prefer Google’s Android operating system. This enables the on-board computer not only to receive broadcast radio and show the fastest route: with additional apps, people will be able to use any Google services and a web browser and even read e-mails and twitter messages directly on the dashboard, or have them read out via the car speaker system. So if I want to use the advantages of a modern on-board computer, I may be forcefully fed to the Google data leech.
As with mobile phones, Google software for Android is often cloud-based to a high degree. Data is not processed on the device itself, but on servers owned by Google or some other service provider. For example, if the driver wants to have the shortest route from A to B calculated, this is not performed by the on-board computer. Rather, the request is transmitted to the navigation service provider, is processed there, and sent back to the car. Typically the transmissions will include a personal identification or at least an identification of the vehicle, which can later be used to trace who wanted to go where.
As a driver I should always read the privacy statement very carefully, to get an idea of what is going to happen to my data. If such information is available at all:
Audi’s premium service called “Audi Connect”, for example, re-routes all personal communications on Twitter etc. through their own server, purportedly for security reasons. When asked, Audi was unable to provide a privacy statement valid in Germany for this service.
Not a complete novelty are localisation services used to retrieve the vehicles in case of theft; these have been installed in higher-end cars for years. They are always active and collect data, even if the car has not been stolen. For a fee, some vendors offer additional services for tracking the car permanently: nosy parents can keep their children under surveillance and jealous partners can spy on each other.
Thanks to e-Call, his technology will soon be available not only in high-end cars, but in every passenger vehicle.
This data will be of particular interest to insurance companies, but we already awarded a BigBrotherAward in 2007 to special insurance tariffs based on driver surveillance.
Dear car manufacturers, even if you feel that this is none of your concern, because the data is stored “by someone else”, or storage is even “legally mandated” – this BigBrotherAward is for you. But, of course, it is also for the legislature for creating, with systems such as e-Call, the technical basis for privacy-sensitive extra services.
Congratulations for the BigBrotherAward 2014!
The BigBrotherAward 2014 in the category Transport goes to MeinFernbus GmbH (approx.: My Long-Distance Bus, Ltd.) for obliging passengers to always show an official ID along with the travel ticket they booked online. This makes anonymous bus journeys impossible. MeinFernbus GmbH does not give any legal or other reasons why producing an ID should be necessary. There is the option to try buying a ticket in cash when boarding, but this entails the risk that the bus is fully booked and one cannot travel. Additionally, buying tickets on board is more expensive than booking them in advance via the Internet.
The full text of this award speech is not yet available, sorry.
In a compelling, entertaining and accessible format, we present these negative awards to companies, organisations, and politicians. The BigBrotherAwards highlight privacy and data protection offenders in business and politics, or as the French paper Le Monde once put it, they are the “Oscars for data leeches”.
Organised by (among others):
The BigBrotherAwards are an international project: Questionable practices have been decorated with these awards in 19 countries so far.
