The BigBrotherAward 2014 in the “Politics” Category goes to the Federal Chancellery (Bundeskanzleramt), represented by its head Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU¹), the Chancellery’s Chief of Staff and commissioner for intelligence agencies, Peter Altmaier (CDU), the State Secretary for intelligence agencies affairs, Klaus-Dieter Fritsche (CSU¹) and the Coordinator for the secret services, Günter Heiß, for

1. the German agencies’ close cooperation with US agency NSA, whose actions have violated international and human rights law, and other secret services in the secret “Echelon” alliance, the “Five Eyes”,

2. the fact that the foreign agency, Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND), which is supervised by the Chancellery, and the interior intelligence agency, Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) are participating in NSA surveillance measures, spying programmes and infrastructures

3. for the current as well as the previous German government‘s reckless negligence in failing to avert crimes and violations of the German Constitution and of civil rights linked to mass eavesdropping and digital espionage, and failing to protect German citizens and companies affected by industrial espionage from further hostile attacks.

So the core issue is the German entanglement with the NSA surveillance scandal and failure to take defensive and protective measures. The blanket, suspicionless eavesdropping on global telecommunications by the US secret service NSA (National Security Agency) and the British secret service GCHQ (General Communications Headquarters) became public knowledge in mid-2013. The historically unprecedented revelations are based on secret documents leaked by ex NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden. In his words, this is “the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history”. By digitally investigating the private spaces of whole populations, all people that communicate using any electronic medium are placed under suspicion, the presumption of innocence is undermined, personal rights are violated and codified basic rights, even democracy itself is put in doubt.

It has gradually turned out that not just US and UK secret services are involved in the global surveillance scandal, but German agencies – foreign (BND), interior (Verfassungsschutz) and military (Militärischer Abschirmdienst, MAD) – participate in this secret transatlantic alliance, too. They benefit from data that is shared and share millions of telecommunications data records themselves – such as personal call records and data on suspects resulting from blanket surveillance of cross-border phone communications.

“So what”, many people still wonder: “who on earth would be able to sift through all these masses of insignificant data? What could possibly happen to me?” That is a regrettably short-sighted sentiment, because severe consequences are possible and have been documented. What this data registration and evaluation could lead to is refusal of entry to the United States, as in the case of German writer Ilija Trojanow who had publicly criticised the US surveillance frenzy. Or, in extreme cases, a US drone attack on “terror suspects”, like the one in Yemen in December 2013 where 17 people in a wedding convoy were killed. Ranging from inconvenience, harassment to outright ordeal, there’s a wide choice of measures to pick from – such as extended border-crossing interrogation, questioning of neighbours or employers, “state trojans” installed in computers, inclusion in US “no fly” or terror lists, or even arrest and torture in special detention units. Even those who blithely believe that they have nothing to hide could always fall victim to a fatal case of mistaken identity – such as Khaled El-Masri, who was erroneously taken for a terrorist, removed to Afghanistan by CIA agents and tortured for several months. Or you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, such as Murat Kumaz who was alleged to be a “terror suspect” due to information from the interior secret service (whose name Verfassungsschutz ironically translates as “protection of the constitution”) and disappeared in the US torture camp at Guantanamo Bay for four and a half years.

Are these just spectacular exceptions? Sure, but there are many “smaller” examples where the surveillance mania had dire consequences. Through a cover authority for the BND named “Central Office for Questioning” (Hauptstelle für Befragungswesen), agents from German and allied secret services investigate hundreds of refugees every year or recruit them as “sources” or snitches – people seeking protection from acute emergencies are being siphoned off and misused for state purposes.

According to information from Edward Snowden, German and US intelligence agencies not only share information on a mass scale, they also share instruments, joint databases (e.g. “Project 6”), spying software such as XKeyScore and infrastructures – in short, “the German Services and the US Services are in bed together”, as Edward Snowden graphically put it in his German TV interview on 26 January 2014.

This close cooperation and habit of mass-scale data sharing, mostly not checked for adherence to privacy standards, is partly based on secret treaties with the Western Allied Powers after World War II. These treaties grant the partners special privileges, opening up wide-ranging opportunities to take action and restrict the German population’s basic rights – without any parliamentary or democratic attendance or scrutiny. This restricts Germany’s sovereignty to this day.

For years and decades, this has made the responsible German Federal Governments and their secret services into accomplices, helpers, and co-perpetrators – in other words, willing partners in the great, aggressive game played by Western intelligence agencies. The Federal Chancellery has had a crucial role in this, one that deserves to be “honoured” and singled out for a negative award today. For this office is the nerve centre for Germany’s Federal Governments: it is tasked with supervising the foreign intelligence service BND and with coordinating and intensifying cooperation between the three secret services at the federal level and with other institutions in Germany and abroad.

And herein lies a plausible answer for those who may have wondered with desperation in the past months why the German government has denied any kind of protection to citizens and businesses who had been targeted by this mass spying: Their conspicuous hesitation after the Snowden revelations and their almost subservient restraint towards the US can probably be explained with the closeness of German–US cooperation, and most of all with the fact that Germany has long since become an integral part of the US security architecture and the US-led “war against terror”. As they are aware of secret bilateral accords, participation and acquiescence with US structures and activities in Germany that clearly violate international and human rights, the German government seems to prefer to maintain a low profile, appease, and play down – particularly as they, to adapt a quote from CCC spokesperson Constanze Kurz, no longer want to be stuck “at the side table” in “the big data roulette”. So the grand coalition is actually pushing for more centralisation and networking amongst the secret services and between services and police – thereby strengthening secret organisations that go against democratic values and are neither transparent nor subject to democratic scrutiny. And the coalition is steadfastly determined to greatly expand the surveillance cosmos, by legalising suspicionless metadata retention for any telecommunications between all German residents yet again. Whereas it should really be high time to significantly reduce such measures in the light of mass eavesdropping by the NSA.

Play down, appease, ignore – there is a name for this official pseudo reaction to the worrying NSA scandal by the German government: Ronald Pofalla (CDU), Chief of Staff at the Chancellery until December 2013 and thus commissioner for intelligence agencies and top supervisor of the foreign intelligence agency, the BND.

When the NSA scandal came to attention in June 2013, Pofalla, the responsible government member, first simply ducked out of sight and kept quiet. Nobody has ever heard any elucidating comment from him on the legality of million-fold processing of telecommunications data by the US services, or about the BND’s role. On the contrary: He quantified the sharing of German citizen’s personal data with US services to be as little as two records, although there was proof of hundreds of cases at the time. Later, despite ongoing revelations, he declared the NSA scandal to be over: all accusations against secret services, he said, had been resolved and there had never been millions of basic rights violations in Germany. The services involved had assured him in writing that they were adhering to German law. A satire TV programme, Extra3 of the North German regional public broadcaster NDR, awarded Pofalla its negative award “Silver Deputy Sheriff Star” for these outstanding “services to fiddling”, which Pofalla declined to accept on camera – maybe he had secretly expected a “Golden Deputy Agent Medal” instead. Or he was looking towards the BigBrotherAwards already … After his resignation from front-line politics, he is obviously seen as an asset by his next employer: German Railways (Deutsche Bahn), who famously received a BigBrotherAward themselves (in 2007) …

And Pofalla’s superior, landlady of the Chancellery? What did Mrs Merkel actually do about the escalating surveillance affair? To put it shortly – as good as nothing! This despite her emphatic oath, sworn three times already, to “dedicate her efforts to the well-being of the German people, promote their welfare, protect them from harm, uphold and defend the Basic Law and the laws of the Federation, perform my duties conscientiously”.

But instead, she tucked her head between her shoulders and deferred to the profound Pofalla, who declared the affair to be over in August 2013; then she pointed towards her then Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich (CSU), who also said the affair was over just a few days later. Friedrich’s sound bite: “all suspicions that were raised have been cleared.” Again, he saw no reason to doubt that the US agencies adhered to the law. He returned from a short trip to the US, happily spreading the tale  that he had personally settled the issue. He said that the Snowden revelations had always been “fallacious claims and suspicions that have dissolved into thin air (…) We can be very satisfied and indeed very proud that our intelligence agencies are regarded by our allies as capable, proven and trustworthy partners” (16 Aug 2013). And to round it off, Friedrich attests NSA critics “a mixture of Anti-Americanism and naïvety” that “hugely gets on [his] wick”. That feeling is certainly reciprocated: we gave Friedrich a BigBrotherAward in 2012. That did not help, unfortunately. Then Interior Minister, which includes responsibility to protect constitutional rights, he justified the NSA’s mass surveillance by freely inventing a so-called “super basic right” to security, and believing that his invention could overrule encoded basic rights and liberties in one fell swoop.

Only when it was revealed in October 2013 that Chancellor Merkel’s mobile phone had been specifically targeted for eavesdropping over many years did Ronald Pofalla suddenly raise his voice again, and this time it was in anger – suddenly he spoke of a “severe breach of trust” by the US. The Chancellor had her spokesperson voice additional disgust by maundering about “a completely new quality”, because “eavesdropping among friends, that just won’t do”. So now we know – it’s not mass spying on the population, not concern about their protection, it takes an unfriendly incursion on the Chancellor’s mobile to finally yield a sharper response towards the initiators in the White House. And, just in passing, our interior secret service, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, was put under pressure once again, as its core tasks include counter-intelligence. It had apparently been completely unaware of the spying activities against the Chancellor, let alone prevented the eavesdropping.

We don’t want to hear anyone say that the German government could do nothing against these hostile attacks on privacy, industry, and government activity, after the publicly celebrated “no spy agreement” with the US was doomed to fail from the start. But the government could expel spying agents in US and other embassies once they are identified by interior intelligence agencies, and declare them personae non gratae. If German citizens’ basic rights are violated, US military installations could be inspected by German authorities – for example the ongoing construction in Wiesbaden of the Consolidated Intelligence Center, in which the NSA is said to be involved, or the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) regional military headquarters in Stuttgart, which plans or planned air raids, drone missions, renditions, and extralegal executions of terror suspects in Africa. And the government could publish and revise secret treaties. Why the government or investigative authorities failed to act in these regards is not evident, and this could be bordering on a breach of the Constitution.

Due to these circumstances, the three NGOs International League for Human Rights, Digitalcourage and Chaos Computer Club felt that they had to file penal charges with the Federal Prosecutor General against the government and the involved secret services, to finally hold them to account over their share of legal and political responsibility. This was an act of self-defence and of help in need, and it became an outlet for thousands that wrote to us and supported the charges. And today, to seek another outlet:

Congratulations on the 2014 BigBrotherAward, Federal Chancellery.

The BigBrotherAward in the category Politics goes to the Minister-Presidents of the 16 German Federal States for establishing the Joint Licence Fee Service of [Germany’s public broadcasters] ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio (Gemeinsamer Beitragsservice von ARD, ZDF und Deutschlandradio) and the ensuing massive collection of personal data of the whole German population.

The former fee collection service, GEZ (Gebühreneinzugszentrale, Fee Collecting Centre) received the BigBrotherAward in 2003 in the Lifetime Achievement category. One proposition in the laudation at the time was that the TV and radio licence fees should be reorganised so as to be collected per household and not per set. In an age when even a digital picture frame can count as a “novel receiving device”, the abolition of a device-based licence fee seemed more than overdue. As of 1 January 2013, the old GEZ has indeed been abolished or rather replaced, and its successor is called Licence Fee Service of ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio.

Together with the new name, the institution also wanted to appear in a new light: The name GEZ had been poisoned through their “fee collecting agents”, who very much in a Stasi manner (Staatssicherheit, the former secret police of the German Democratic Republic) made unannounced visits to households, trying to ferret out the number of TV or radio sets in the flat; they even dug their way through dustbins in the hopes of finding discarded TV magazines. The GEZ was one huge data leech who is even said to have bought address data from lotteries in order to identify fee dodgers. A nationwide shadow population register was established, and practically every living soul was registered with the GEZ.

From 2013 on, this was supposed to change. With a hew household-based licence fee, so it was hoped, all this would no longer be necessary. No more data collecting, no more visits to private homes.

But the reality is quite a different story, As before, it is not the households but the fee payers that are in the focus of investigation. The Inter-State Agreement on Media Services (Rundfunkstaatsvertrag) says that as before, every time a person changes address within Germany, data will be transferred from the registration authority to the Licence Fee Service. In this process, not only the necessary data will be shared but just about everything the population registers yield, including former addresses, evidence on social circumstances etc. From 2015 on the Licence Fee Service will even be allowed again to buy data from private sources, such as address mongers, insurance companies, debt collecting agencies, lotteries or the mail redirection addresses stored with Deutsche Post AG.

In addition, a one-off snapshot of every resident of the Federal Republic of Germany is being arranged. All registration data have been “frozen” on 3 March 2013, and will piece-wise be forwarded to the Licence Fee Service within the next two years. After a person’s obligation to pay a licence fee has been successfully established, these data are supposed to be deleted from the databases. But the Inter-State Agreement grants the Licence Fee Service a retention period until the end of 2015.

Further to this, the Licence Fee Service has been allowed to take over the complete database of its predecessor GEZ. So in the end the Licence Fee Service has three times as many records as before: The old inventory from the GEZ, the new registry snapshot of 3 March, and the regular updates on all address changes. And further data can be bought on the free market.

“Simple. For all”, this is the advertising slogan for the new licence fee. One home, one fee. – But it isn’t really as simple as that. If for instance there are several people living in a flat, only one of them needs to pay. And the others? They need to tell the Licence Fee Service the reference number of the respective fee payer in order to avoid having to pay. So the Licence Fee Service not only registers every home, flat and apartment, but also who is living there, and with whom. The Licence Fee Service therefore knows as much about us as the proper authorities – or even more!

The quasi-Stasi fee collecting agents, by the way, will also continue working. They are now called “persons who investigate compliance with the prescriptions of the Inter-State Agreement”, and have been retrained: They now no longer search for secretly operated TV sets, but for new, non-registered apartment doors.

Those seeking information about the work of the Licence Fee Service or trying to file a complaint about them won’t find it easy to follow the data tracks, by the way. For not only the state-level public broadcasters (Landesrundfunkanstalten) but also the Licence Fee Service claim to be in charge of the data. This is unusual because according to the Inter-State Agreement it is the public broadcasters alone who are, in their respective regions, responsible for collecting and checking licence fees.

The authors of the Inter-State Agreement have thought of an especially cunning trick to protect the Licence Fee Service from possible attacks from affected citizens or data protection authorities: They declared the Licence Fee Service to be a “joint institution with no independent legal capacity” (nicht rechtsfähige Gemeinschaftseinrichtung); this means the Licence Fee Service isn’t a separate institution at all, but simply a subdivision of the broadcasting institutions. As a result of this, the broadcasters don’t need to commission the Licence Fee Service to process the data they have. The Licence Fee Service just goes ahead with the processing, for it is after all just a sub-department of all the broadcasters. Sounds harmless, but it is not. Due to this trick we are not looking at what §11 of the German Federal Data Protection Act (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz) calls “commissioned data processing” (Auftragsdatenverarbeitung) but at a case of internal data processing. This sounds like a lot of legalese hair splitting, but it is very important for determining who is in charge.

One might look at this another way: A “joint institution with no legal capacity” doesn’t officially exist at all, and therefore isn’t allowed to process data either. On the other hand, a clearly defined relationship would be necessary to ensure that the Licence Fee Service doesn’t develop a life all of its own, but performs all its data processing under the control of the broadcasters, as prescribed in the Inter-State Agreement. Such a relationship is also needed so that citizens and supervisory authorities can be clear who is their point of contact. For the time being, though, both the Licence Fee Service and the broadcasters claim responsibility for holding and processing the data, and thus create a state of utter confusion.

The administrative court of Berlin is currently deliberating on whether this constellation is actually admissible under the terms of the law.

The BigBrotherAwards jury is expressly committed to the idea that a democratic society needs an independent public broadcasting service that is financed by all citizens alike, no matter if they individually tune in to these public broadcasts or not. Unfortunately, though, our policy makers have missed the chance to introduce a new and truly data-minimising method of raising the necessary funds via the household-based fee.

Our heartfelt congratulations to the BigBrotherAward 2013, dear Minister-Presidents of the German Federal States.

Federal Financial Supervisory Agency

The Federal Financial Supervisory Agency (Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht, BaFin) is keeping a “registry of consultants” since 1 November 2012. This database collects all known information on complaints about investment advisers. Whether the complaints are justified or not is not relevant for being recorded. If BaFin considers complaints to be justified, it can ban consultants from giving investment advice for up to two years. This amounts to an occupational ban and will likely have consequences in terms of employment relations as well. The goal to protect investors is pursued by challenging only the weakest link in the sales chain. Pressure from employers and sales managers, the actual cause of many mistakes and complaints, is not recorded in the registry of consultants. The Volksbank (local co-operative bank) in Göppingen has filed a constitutional complaint against the database.

Federal Government – Access to Telecommunications Users’ Data (Bestandsdatenauskunft)

The German government has introduced a “Bill for Changing the Telecommunications Law and for a New Regulation of Access to Telecommunications Users’ Data”. This is going to concede far too wide-reaching privileges for obtaining information to the security agencies. The German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) had necessitated a change to the law in a 2012 ruling, but many parts of the new bill do not meet the requirements made by the court. Among other things, the identification of Internet users via their IP addresses would be permissible even for minor misdemeanours. According to the bill, which has already passed the first chamber of the German parliament (Bundestag), the Federal and State Offices for the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutzbehörden, i.e. domestic intelligence agencies), the Military Counter-Espionage Agency (Militärischer Abschirmdienst, the military intelligence agency) and the Federal Intelligence Agency (Bundesnachrichtendienst, the foreign intelligence agency) will have access to the data, even when there is no concrete suspicion of anti-constitutional activities.

District of Peine

The district of Peine (Lower Saxony) has threatened a 24-year-old motorist with a medical-psychological assessment (known by its German acronym MPU, a procedure used by the authorities to decide whether to revoke or reissue a driving licence). The reason: said motorist had expressed himself critically on Facebook about speed cameras installed permanently at a country road. From this, Peine district authorities derived a “certain amount of conflict potential” that would not be appropriate in traffic. After the incident became public, a speaker of the council acknowledged that the case was an overreaction of a district employee. At the same time, however, he confirmed that in three other cases the municipality had filed criminal charges for postings on the Internet with grossly offensive character. For years there has been a broad discussion about the dubious nature of police and secret service investigations in social networks. To see road traffic authorities browsing Facebook for critical comments, and disciplining individuals based on such, adds a new and frightening dimension.

EU monitoring system EUROSUR

“Eurosur” is an “early warning system” to facilitate the “monitoring, investigation, identification, tracking, prevention and interception” of illegal border crossings into the EU. With the use of drones, satellites, radar surveillance, and also by utilising secret service reconnaissance methods, the borders of the EU are fortified and developed into an electronic fortress in order to repel migrants and refugees. New surveillance technologies aim to detect refugee boats and prevent them from even leaving their country of origin. If that has already happened, boats will be intercepted at sea. Thus, the already limited right to asylum is being eroded even further. The Internal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament adopted “Eurosur” in November 2012. “Eurosur” is to support the EU Member States and their border protection agency “Frontex” with a preemptive border control system to advance reconnaissance methods.

Regis24 et.al.

The company Regis24 and other so-called address mediators are building databases that are coming dangerously close to a parallel central population register – with a questionable appreciation of the law. Regis24 offers companies the service to retrieve information from the population register. If, for example, a mobile phone company wants to know the current place of residence of a defaulting customer, it commissions this task from Regis24. Regis24, in turn, requests the information from the population register and forwards it on to the phone company. So far, so good. This should normally conclude the process, but Regis24 stores the data in their own databases, to re-use them for further inquiries. In this way, step by step and without knowledge of the affected persons, Regis24 created a „shadow register“ that is neither transparent nor controllable by the citizens.

Deutscher Musikrat GmbH

Deutscher Musikrat (“German music council”) organises the prestigious competition “Jugend musiziert” (a national talent competition for young musicians). To register, participants have to submit a broad range of personal data – and agree to their extensive use. This data may indeed be necessary to organise the competition, but why is it necessary to publish not just names, first names and years of birth, but also full dates of birth, gender, landline and mobile numbers of mostly under-age participants on the Internet, or use those data for "press and public relations"? More specific options of consent to the different types of use would have been appropriate at this point.

Palm WebOS

Does anyone still remember Palm? In the early 1990s they were among the first to introduce palm-sized digital organisers, long before smartphones and mobile Internet access conquered the world. Palm is now part of Hewlett-Packard and is a vendor of smartphones based on HP’s “WebOS” operating system. The joy of owners of these devices will be marred by a look at the terms of service of Palm Web OS, however. These stipulate not only that sensitive information, such as contacts and calendars, will regularly be transferred to Palm. But even registration data, account and device information, contents and technical data may be stored, published, transferred or used in other ways. Our recommendation: If you do not agree to the terms of service, you can return the device before the usual legal deadline.

Frankfurt (Oder) Police, homicide division

We disapprove of the unusual investigative methods of a homicide division of Frankfurt (Oder)¹ police. To receive information from the public in a kidnapping case, they set up an email address at the hosting company Web.de. By doing so they gave authority over the incoming information (hints, speculation, suspicions, etc.) to a private enterprise. Such investigations generally require a large amount of tact and professionalism, to avoid premature publication of speculation, and to protect witnesses. Incoming clues have to be treated delicately and confidentially. Anyone can register a „web.de“ address – even the delinquent. To be aware of all this should be a matter of course for professional investigators. Not so, apparently for the Frankfurt police.

Reprimand & Look Back: Facebook

Facebook wants to improve its range of goods in terms of quality and quantity. In the case of Facebook, those goods are its users, and Facebook would like to force them to divulge increasing amounts and more sensitive items of their data.

Facebook is now trying to prevent pseudonymous use of its services. Users are obliged to register with the names listed in their identity documents. Should anyone dare to use a false name, Facebook is calling on other users to act as informers. For a time a small pop-up could be seen that asked users to supply the correct names for profile images. If anyone was found to be using a false name, the account was suspended until scans of identity documents were submitted.

Another novelty is the coercion to leave traces with every activity inside Facebook. Previously, users could read updates or open a friend’s pages without the other user noticing it. This is no longer possible. If a user reads, say, a group message, a list appears for everyone to see that lists in detail who read the message and when. Facebook can no longer be used “silently”.

Another example of Facebook’s data hoarding mania is the Instagram photo-sharing service. After Instagram was bought by Facebook in April 2012, the photo platform published a new version of its Terms and Conditions in December. Initially, Instagram even reserved the right to sell its users’ pictures. Responding to strong protests, these changes were revoked. What was kept in place were changes that brought Instagram closer to Facebook. The real-name obligation now applies to Instagram users too, and users’ data can freely be shared with Facebook in the future.

What a ubiquitous Facebook can ultimately lead to was shown in the case of a small primary school in the Harz region. According to a newspaper report, 6 children were excluded from lessons because their parents had not agreed to photos being published on Facebook.

The BigBrotherAward 2013 in the category “Government and Administration” goes to the Federal Police, represented by its president Dieter Romann, for discriminatory and racist identity verification and personal searches in the course of identity checks without any given suspicion.

So what happened?

In December 2010, on his way from Kassel to Frankfurt, a 25-year old student of architecture is travelling on a crowded train when two uniformed officials rudely prompt him to identify himself. After not being given a reason for the check, he refuses, whereupon the policemen grab his backpack and start searching for his identity papers, only to find a bar of chocolate instead. They ask its owner, which they address informally, whether he has stolen it. Thereupon, they force him to go back with them to the federal police department in Kassel to verify his identity.

After experiencing this, the man, born and raised in Germany, takes the matter to the Koblenz Administrative Court to determine the unlawfulness of the physical and informational transgressions against him. He has been singled out and checked by federal police 10 times in two years. In court, one of the policemen frankly testified that the man, among the many travellers, had only been conspicuous because of his darker complexion which created the “suspicion” that he might have been an “illegal alien”. This practice corresponded with the situational awareness and relevant border-police experiences to the Federal Police Act – even more so as “illegal aliens” seemed to have travelled on this track section frequently and that there had been violations of the Residence Act.

The Administrative Court followed this line of argumentation and in February 2012 ruled “Racial Profiling” by police officers to be constitutional – granting a judicial blank cheque to a racial practice that the federal police admitted openly and defended as “effective”. This judgement contradicts the vote of the UN’s Human Rights Committee, which unequivocally declares such practices to be racist discrimination and therefore prohibited under international law. Article 3 of the German Constitution prohibits such discrimination as well.

Identity checks without any suspicions – also called “Schleierfahndung” (veiled searches) – may be legal in German police laws, but their constitutionality is highly disputed. They are seen as compensation for the abolished borders within Europe. The shift of border controls to the interior of a country has been criticised by the EU Commission as “covert border controls”, which implies a violation of the Schengen Agreement. On top of this, the practise has proven itself to be a gateway for discriminatory practices which make use of racist selection of attributes and is an integral part of repressive policies against foreigners and asylum seekers.

There has actually been an increase in complaints by travellers who felt treated with a racist attitude by the Federal Police. According to “Spiegel” (2/2013) and “Freitag” (7 Feb 2013), many victims and witnesses repeatedly complain about the Federal Police discriminating against people because of their skin colour or origin – in trains, at train stations, airports and highways, in most cases to no effect. Furthermore, a 2010 study by the EU Agency of Fundamental Rights substantiates these everyday experiences of many black people and People of Colour, according to which the rate at which the police checks people with apparent migratory background is above average.

The plaintiff in this case appealed to the Higher Administrative Court of Rhineland-Palatinate against the shocking ruling of the Administrative Court, The higher court ruled differently and found the practice to be unconstitutional. In their judgement from October 2012, the judges decided that these practices violated the principle of non-discrimination. A representative of the Federal Police reluctantly apologised to the plaintiff, so that the people involved in the proceedings could lay the case to rest.

So is everything alright now? Unfortunately, no: neither will racist sentiments and patterns disappear from many police officers’ minds, nor will the discriminating and arbitrary practices be altered. The police union’s statement that deemed the Higher Administrative Court’s decision “impractical” showcases how internalised these practices are. “You can once again see”, criticises the union’s federal chairman, “that the courts engage in aesthetic administration of justice instead of looking towards everyday practice.” Sure enough, the aesthetes in judge’s gowns can be quite a nuisance in the tough life of a policeman. Such reactions prove that racist patterns of thought go beyond the realm of the Federal Police and are commonplace within the safety authorities as well, which why one could rightly call this “institutional racism”.

So why, some may ask, is this even relevant to the BigBrotherAwards? This is not about the cross linking of mega data packages and tools that enable people to snoop around in private data, insidious software or international treaties between control-trolls who want the best for us, or rather from us: our data and our money. No, this is about an issue of legal policy, of human rights, with directly discriminating effects on the right to informational self-determination of people who become the target of racially motivated police checks and manhunts. They have to endure police controls and personal searches, and disclose their identity and consequently their personal data – often several times in sequence. Without specific evidence, without any suspicion. They fit into the police’s scheme exclusively because they have a different hair colour or complexion, or just look “alien”, “foreign” or like Muslims.

Of course, even with a multitude of relevant cases and complaints it would not be right to accuse all 40,000 employees of the Federal Police or all police forces as a whole of institutional racism. However, there is more disturbing evidence beyond racial profiling: the disproportionate police violence towards migrants and one-sided investigations in cases of violence connected to neo-Nazis. For more than a decade now, security authorities have not been able to track down the right-wing extremists responsible for the NSU murders – instead, the victims of the so called “Döner murders” and their families were put under suspicion by a special commission (“Soko Bosporus”) in an outright racist manner. In extreme cases, some police officers have been identified as members of Ku-Klux-Klan or other neo-Nazi groups.

Since 9/11, even the state-run fight against terrorism shows features of discrimination, as migrants are declared to be an increased security risk, put under general suspicion and hence are made subjects of a rigid system of surveillance. In this context, the case of specific tracing of “Islamic sleeper agents” should be remembered. This kind of profiling still existed in the CDU/FDP-governed Lower Saxony in 2012: a check list in a brochure of the Authority for the “Protection” of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz, the state’s domestic intelligence agency) was supposed to help identify young Muslims in danger of succumbing to “extreme Islamism”. The listed “radicalisation criteria” included “weight loss due to changed dietary habits”, “long trips to countries with a Muslim majority”, “genuine fascination with life after death”, sudden wealth or debts. The brochure states that whoever notices these “suspicious” deviations from the norm should contact security authorities in order to exchange information about that person – practically a call for denunciation.

Bi-national marriages are subjected to embarrassing investigations of privacy as well: “What was the weather like on your wedding day? What kind of seating furniture do you use in your living room? How often do you visit religious institutions? Which ones do you visit and when? Do you have any pet name for your spouse? When was the last time you and your spouse spent an evening out? Where? What did you eat yesterday? What is your favourite dish and what is your spouse’s? On which side of the marital bed do you sleep? Which movies do you like best and which ones does your spouse prefer? Does he like to read? If so, what?”

This is just a selection of a catalogue of 115 questions used by the authorities of Bremen, Hamburg and Berlin in interviews that are conducted individually with each partner of a bi-national marriage – to detect possible contradictions that could attest a “fake marriage”. Through this attack on the very core of privacy of the affected people, personality profiles can be constructed – in violation of the basic right to informational self-determination. If contradictions are detected, the affected persons is even in danger of becoming a victim to drastic measures such as apartment searches.

Now back to our winner, the Federal Police, which in the meantime campaigns for “respect!”, and using the order “no place for racism” tries to banish racism from the realms of society. At least they accepted a banner with that slogan from an anti-racism initiative last year, and are now using it as decoration. Against the background of the public discussion regarding “racial profiling” and transgressions by police officers, the Federal Police wants to “publicly promote a clear signal against racism and intolerance”, as is written on its homepage. A welcome move of self-criticism or just sweet talk?

Instead of using trite advertising stunts, the police should introduce an obligatory program to combat racism, and employ more citizens with a migration background. Legislators are called upon to forbid identity checks based on appearance and establish independent control and complaints boards. Otherwise, nothing will change for the better.

Congratulations for your BigBrotherAward 2013, Federal Police, and get well soon!

The BigBrotherAward 2013 in the “Economy” Category goes to Deutsche Post Adress GmbH & Co. KG, represented by Executives Mr Josef Gatzek and Dr Frank Schlein, for establishing what is probably the largest family of address databases in Germany.

Our winner has a famous mother, the good old “yellow” Post Office ­– known today as Deutsche Post AG. This mother confidently regards herself as a very strong brand in so-called address management. And there are good reasons for that. Deutsche Post controls an impressive database: more than eight million people change their postal address every year, and about four million of these ask Deutsche Post to redirect their mail. As they do this, most people agree that their address will be shared with third parties that already had the previous address – unless they explicitly opt out of that consent.

Deutsche Post Adress GmbH & Co KG feed these data into a database called “Postadress Move”, which our winner … commercialises, if you excuse the ugly word. “It’s those people’s own fault”, you may think, because you are always very careful about your own data of course – you would never set up a redirection order and always read the small print in order to object to anyone sharing your data with anybody else. And that may make you feel safe. But even if you are not using redirection, you still haven’t escaped our winner’s attention. About 1.2 million further new addresses still end up in the Postadress database, for instance if they were shared with other members of the Deutsche Post family or if they appeared in public directories or population registers, because those kinds of sources are used by our winner as well.

All that results in quite a collection: records of about nine million house moves from the last 24 months are available in “Postadress Move”, ready for businesses to keep their address data up to date. For a fee, of course. If you pay an extra fee, you can also ask a subsidiary of our winner to compare your data with those of more than five million address changes from earlier years (a scheme called “moversPLUS”). Our winner also offers to purge addresses they receive from undertakers, or that they have dug up by hand themselves, or that have been returned as undeliverable, from your address books (this is called “Postadress Clean”). In short: our winner offers services for all your needs, from retrieving data from registration authorities up to complex research in someone’s previous area of residence (the “Adress Research” portfolio). Need it be mentioned that another extra offer is to follow up “problem cases” by telephone calls if necessary, coupled with a success guarantee?

Another subsidiary of our winner offers the finishing touches, consisting of address data clearout, databases adorned with phone, fax and mobile numbers, a socio-economic assessment of the residential area, and yet another product for address-based evaluation of non-payment risks.

Didn’t we give a BigBrotherAward as early as 2001 für credit scores derived from data about someone’s residential area and neighbourhood? We’re not overly scaremongering here: it is, after all, Deutsche Post’s direct marketing department that boasts of having registered 19 million buildings, 34 million households and about 1 billion items of other data, of being able to source the local knowledge of 80,000 postal workers, and feed all this into a database that provides excellent knowledge about age structure, family arrangements, spending power, housing information, consumption preferences and mail ordering habits.

Your postman or postwoman as the eye and ear of a scoring service provider – surely that’s exactly what you were waiting for when you supplied your correct address in that mail redirection order, wasn’t it?

Do you get that creeping feeling that a there’s a hunt going on, a hunt for the most current address data, indeed for the consumers themselves? When we got started, we were talking about a friendly redirection service, gushing about strong mothers and big brands and telling tales about voluntary consent to addresses being used to update senders. But if you fan out the products offered by Deutsche Post in the area of address services, a universe opens up that you probably won’t willingly enter any more: long-term observation, neighbourhood investigation, follow-up telephone calls, “proactive” updating of address data and enhancing these with phone numbers, all from a single source. A terribly nice family, these Deutsche Post “daughters”. Hands up, resistance is futile!

Dear consumer, would you like to move house, or perhaps drop out, just escape for a while? Or do you just want to have your mail redirected? Whatever it is, don’t fool yourself: you will be found.

Congratulations on the BigBrotherAward 2013 in the Economics category, dear Deutsche Post Adress GmbH & Co. KG – head hunter of customer addresses.

The BigBrotherAward in the category Global Data Acquisition goes to Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt, Founders and Board of Directors of Google Inc., Mountain View, California, USA.

This award is not going to criticise individual transgressions against privacy and data protection. Neither will we denounce individual passages in the company’s Terms and Conditions. No: the company itself, with its global, all-encompassing data hoarding, the monitoring of users as the core of its business model, its de-facto monopoly – those are the problems.

Google must be broken up.

Most of you may still view Google as a search engine. But Google has become something completely different. Google is first and foremost a global advertising company. Advertisements are the business with which Google earns its billions. All other Google services are subordinate to that. They either serve to elicit as much information about the target group as possible (Search, Maps, Docs, Gmail, etc.), or to create a “cool” self-image (Google Mars, Glass, …) – after all, the image not only helps to promote the business, it also creates an aura of political unassailability.

Of course, in their own words, Google’s business goals sound very different: “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” That is a claim to power, because the meaning behind this is: Google acquires all the world’s information and utilises it. Obviously, in order to organise information and make it accessible, one has to possess it first.

We are not going to enumerate all of Google’s services. There are dozens of books out there telling you about them.

In the advertising market, Google has something of a monopoly now. To be noticed, one must come to terms with Google – by paying money to Google for Adwords, its sponsored search results, for example. Paying money isn’t bad, what’s bad is that there is almost no alternative, now that Google controls more than 75% of the global search engine market and more than 90% in Germany.

Those trying to make money from their website’s content use Google Adsense to insert context-dependent advertising banners into their pages, and they install Google Analytics on their site, registering and evaluating all visitors to the page and thus surrendering them to Google.

The well-meant advice to avoid publishing too much about oneself on the net does not help here. Because the data Google collects about us are not consciously published online. They are created “en passant” as a by-product.

According to insiders, Google evaluates at least 57 different markers to identify us and filter our search results, and many of these are used even when we are simply using the search engine, or Maps or YouTube, without being logged into a Google account. It is not disclosed what these markers are. Presumably, they include IP address, browser, operating system, screen resolution, installed fonts – the browser “fingerprint” – and perhaps also whether or not we use search terms suggested by the auto-completion, how long we look at a results page, or how frequently we make typos.

Google knows who we are, where we are, and what is important to us. Google not only knows for which terms we searched in the past, but also on which results we actually clicked. Google knows minutely when we were awake on any day, which people, news, books we have been interested in, which diseases we have investigated, which places we visited, which videos we watched, and which ads appealed to us.

We may not remember what we did on an arbitrary day last year – Google knows. Not just about us, but about billions of other people as well.

Google’s profiling happens everywhere. It has reached beyond the Internet for a long time now. Google has sent camera cars through the streets of the world, taking unsolicited snapshots of life in the streets and images of buildings. At the same time, Google sniffed out WiFi data valuable for geolocating. Oops, of course Google didn’t intend to do that, it was just a programmer’s slip-up.

With their new hip product “Google Glass” (data glasses, capable of recording pictures, videos and audio, and sending it all off to Google), technophilic consumers will unwittingly start collecting data on Google’s behalf as human drones, starting at the end of this year: on trains, at parties, in editing room meetings. Just one pan from left to right, and Google’s face detection could kick in and register everyone present, and casual as well as confidential conversations could be recorded.

You won’t even need to type anything. Google knows who you are, what you are, where you are, what you care about and who your friends are.

But Google would never do anything bad with this information! After all, their motto is “don’t be evil”. Even if we were to believe Google: This collection of personality profiles of billions of people, accumulated over the years, is a danger in itself. What would happen if the shareholders were to demand more money, or if Google were sold to another company? What happens to the data if it falls into really evil hands? And which government, which intelligence agency wouldn’t love to get their hands on this information? In 2012 alone Google received 42,000 official information requests, of which more than a third were from American agencies.

Did you know what the most frequent search terms in Google were in 2012? They were “Facebook” and “YouTube”. You might not find that very interesting. But it is, since it shows an alarming development: Google has become the central portal to the Internet. People entering “Facebook” as a search term do not want to search information about Facebook. They want to navigate to the Facebook website, but cannot be bothered to enter the complete web address, so they just throw it at Google. This informs Google about every step they take on the net. How did that happen? Well, it is the gentle force of fact, namely the fact that Google is most browsers’ default search engine. Of course you can change this preset, but who does? Everything works fine as is.

Years ago many users changed from the Internet Explorer to the Open Source browser Firefox, to escape from the evil software giant Microsoft. But how free is Firefox, when the lion’s share of its funding has been contributed by Google? In 2011, the Mozilla foundation received US$ 130 million per year, 85% of their total revenue. Currently Google pays US$ 300 million annually for the privilege of being the default search engine in the Firefox browser. Details of the agreement are trade secrets. In matters relating to its own business, Google is not so keen on making all information accessible and useful. The same goes for the search algorithms, and the markers Google records of its users.

With a coup de main in March 2012, Google merged the privacy policies of all of their more than 60 services into a single document. It is touching to read Google’s affirmations that under the new privacy policy they would not collect more data than before. Who would know better than Google that combining data from different sources makes them especially valuable? What does that mean for you? For example that your email address at work can be linked to the humourous YouTube videos that you uploaded privately. Social context? Different aspects of our personality? Informational self-determination? Just a façade – for Google, users have only one unique identity. Full stop.

The reputation of any other company with such surveillance capabilities would surely suffer. Not so for Google. Wherever Google is criticised, its fans come to the rescue. Google couldn’t be at fault, that’s just the nature of the Internet. The service they provide is great. (Well, it is). And it’s just the way users want it. And anyway, everything is a lot more open now. And if you don’t like it, you can learn computer programming yourself. Or just go away.

Google makes information accessible. Free of charge. And that’s what makes it popular. At the same time, Google is establishing itself as central information broker and is gradually becoming an indispensable public service. Nobody really likes to ponder over that.

Yes, Google grants free admission to Disneyland. But it also installs itself as the omnipresent doorman, registering everything and everyone, and never losing sight of them.

Google cleverly exploits its image of being free and open, suggesting that progressive technology implies progressive politics. Being part of Google’s “Summer of Code” is cool for programmers; they’ll keep wearing the T-shirts for years to come. Youngsters participating in Google’s “Hackathon” get an official reception at the European Parliament. Brussels’ “in-crowd” of employees of European Parliament members regularly meet on Google’s premises for a round of pinball, small talk and drinks. That’s cute, but it’s also what lobbyists would refer to as “cultivating relationships”.

Science also gets its share. Google awarded the petty sum of 3.5 million Euros to the Humboldt University in Berlin for its associated “Institute for Internet and Society”. Google board member Eric Schmidt claims the institute is completely independent. Sure. We don’t assume that the scientists at this institute have let Google just simply “buy” them. They were already researching topics highly interesting for Google, such as copyright law. And to see a professorship at the university that used to work critically on “Computer Science in Education and Society” not being re-staffed for work in the same subject area (because now there is the “Google Institute”), … who could blame Google for that?

And then there’s “Co:llaboratory”, Google’s think tank in Berlin that invites scholars and activists for discussions about interesting topics. And it gets them involved. Just recently Co:llaboratory asked the Working Group on Data Retention (“Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung”) about developing a common catalogue of questions to political parties for the German federal election in September 2013. Collaborating with the world’s largest data leech? Hello?

No, Google is not the defender of the free net. It is a company with very specific interests. This data leech will only foster the free net as long as it is beneficial to its own business with the data by-catch.

So what about us? We are at least partly to blame, for having been taken in so easily. For our naïveté, our small-minded parsimony, our “I-don’t-care-as-long-as-it-doesn’t-harm-me” mentality.

We act like Peter Schlemihl from Adelbert von Chamisso’s fairy-tale. He sells his shadow to a friendly gentleman, in exchange for a bottomless wallet. Schlemihl never considered his shadow to be of any significance, but as soon as he no longer has it, he finds that people shun and despise him. He would like to undo his deal, but the once friendly gentleman shows his true face, and quickly changes his terms of service: Schlemihl can get his shadow back not for money, but only in exchange for his soul. As soon as he gets his hands on the shadow, the friendliness vanishes, and what comes to light is the monopolist’s arrogance.

Google’s niceness ends abruptly when its core business is involved. in March 2013, Google removed the advertisement filter “Adblock” from its Android App Store “Google Play”.

Meanwhile we open our doors and firewalls and accept gifts borne by crafty Greeks from Mountain View, so nicely arrayed in front of us. We will pay dearly. Google is a Trojan Horse.

You don’t believe that Google is “evil”? Maybe they mean well. But their Californian technocrat’s dream has totalitarian aspirations. If you don’t believe it yet, just listen to Google a little more closely.

Quote from Eric Schmidt, of Google: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Someone who perceives themself to be under constant surveillance and has reason to assume that the information stored may harm them at some time in the future, will hesitate to exercise their basic human rights, such as freedom of speech, or freedom of assembly. If that happens, it is no longer a private matter, as it causes damage to the general public and to a living democracy.

Eric Schmidt once more: “I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions …They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.”

This is getting creepy. We can imagine how much Google needs to know about us, to be able to achieve that.

People are flexible and react to their environment. Whoever is under constant surveillance, being registered, commercialised, and accompanied by specially tailored offers will change their behaviour over time, aligning it with the expectations of those evaluating the data. This is a kind of manipulation we no longer recognise as such under our filter bubble.

Sergey Brin of Google: “We want Google to be the third half of your brain.”

And Larry Page: “‘It will be included in people’s brains, […] Eventually you’ll have the implant, where if you think about a fact, it will just tell you the answer.”

This is no longer about an individual leeway that everyone can negotiate for themselves. This is about basic human rights, which are inalienable. It is about the common good and about democracy.

What should the Trojans have done to the wooden horse?

The answer is simple: Break it into pieces!

And that is what we have to do to Google.

In the 80s we set out to give people power over their computers and their data. PCs, personal computers, became an intelligent tool for everyone. Freedom. Adventure. The final frontier. Before that, people were reduced to typing something on dumb terminals, connected to mainframe computers. It looks increasingly as if that liberation is only a passing phase. We’re on our way back to mainframe technology. Google will be the gigantic supercomputer and our smart phones, tablets and netbooks are today’s dumb terminals with a new design.

What can we do?

We can start by using a different search engine. Have you heard of MetaGer? Ixquick? Startpage? Yandex? DuckDuckGo? Tineye? Discover Diversity! We should store letters, strategy papers and spreadsheets on our own servers instead of Google Docs. We should look for a small email provider and pay for the service. Leave our comfort zone and re-assert our responsibility.

Well, yes. Online life will be a little less comfortable. But it will remain, or finally become, worth living.

What can politicians do?

It is certainly auspicious that European data protection officials have closed ranks against Google, which has flatly refused to conform to legal requirements. But where are the Members of the European Parliament who are willing to turn down the hordes of lobbyists from the US and become involved in creating a European privacy and data protection legislation worthy of its name? Where are the politicians who understand the reach of the global information monopoly and start acting? Monopolies must be regulated – and services that have become a public utility must be put under public supervision.

We need a common search index accessible by all search engine vendors, maintained by a European foundation and publicly funded. This would give small companies with insufficient funds, but good ideas for web searching, a chance and there could once again be true competition.

What should Google do?

Dear Googles, forget this world domination thing. Stop treating humans like vegetables and use your innovative spirit for something truly challenging. Use it to develop new business models that foster the network and society, and are not based on the exploitation of our personality.

Congratulations on the BigBrotherAward 2013, Larry Page, Sergey Brin und Eric Schmidt of Google.

The BigBrotherAward 2013 in the “Workplace” Category goes to Apple Retail Germany GmbH Munich.

[“Apple Retail” operates Apple Stores in Germany, making the company the central point of contact between Apple and customers. It should not be confused with Apple GmbH in Munich, who won a BigBrotherAward two years ago for taking their customers hostage with new hardware that could only be fully used if customers would submit to quasi-monopolist terms and conditions. No, this year’s winner, Apple Retail Germany GmbH, is given the award in the “Workplace” category for a particularly impudent, ideologically embellished form of video surveillance.]

According to inside sources, Apple Retail Germany has equipped its modern Apple Stores with numerous video cameras – not only in the showrooms, but also „in the manager's office, the stockroom and in the ‘genius room’ where the technicians work“. Here the employees’ activities “are continuously filmed by video cameras (CCTV) and stored to hard disk”, according to the in-house “data protection consent agreement for video surveillance”. Later in the consent agreement it is emphasized that no surveillance takes place in other areas on the premises and that the surveillance as such does not serve to monitor the employees’ work habits.

In contrast, the news magazine “Der Spiegel” reported in 2012 that an inspection by the trade supervisory board (Gewerbeaufsicht) in the Munich Apple Store revealed cameras which did not survey the stockroom, but rather the personnel. And in the online edition of the newspaper “Süddeutsche Zeitung” from 25 Jan 2013, it was reported that an anonymous blog accused Apple of “installing cameras in social rooms, and in front of the lavatories in order to observe which employees used the toilet and how often. In addition, audio recordings were made in some of the stores.” Further it was reported that “the security center for the European Apple Stores is situated in England, where all the images from the surveillance cameras, transferred via Internet, converge”.

Video surveillance in the form described here is forbidden in Germany. Current data protection law in Germany allows video surveillance in sales rooms only, not the continuous surveillance of employees in all working areas. Employment law also prohibits the evaluation of video data in England as described here. This cannot be legalised after the fact with a consent agreement. In fact, we question in particular the legality of this manner of obtaining the agreement: to present it for signature along with the employment contract invariably contradicts the necessary voluntariness.

Against this background it seems almost cynical that in the consent document it further states “I am aware that I am not obligated to grant my consent. Refusing to accept will not have any consequences”. Perhaps the employment contract will nevertheless be concluded, but it remains unclear how, if consent is refused, Apple Stores can ensure that certain employees will be exempted from filming. Does the Apple concern have an enigmatic software to make the objectors invisible? Until such a magical software exists, continuous video recording without consent remains inadmissible.

Once the consent agreement has been signed, AppleStores confers upon itself the right to examine the recordings “if there is reason to suspect that in the Apple Store a theft, misappropriation or similar crime” has been committed. That amounts to a full power of attorney, allowing the employer in Apple Stores to evaluate the recorded material without any restriction. Such a far-reaching authorisation contradicts the case law of the Federal Labour Court (Bundesarbeitsgericht), which considers the unfounded comprehensive monitoring of employees at their workplace to be illegitimate. In view of this judgement, one may doubt whether employees can “voluntarily” grant their employers such extensive rights. Besides, a permission to store recordings for 30 days, as specified in the consent agreement, is disproportionate and therefore inadmissible according to data protection law. At least the practice in Frankfurt, according to the State of Hesse’s Data Protection Commissioner, was to store recordings for only 14 days.

Nor is customer data protection taken very seriously in the Apple Stores. Information signs about video surveillance in customer areas were placed at dog’s eye level for a long time. Only after data protection officials intervened were signs moved to waist height. They are the size of the palm of a hand, on transparent film and stuck on glass doors. Apple Retail GmbH refused to make the signs more visible as this would violate Apple’s design guidelines.

Apple Stores is not alone with its disproportionate video surveillance. The jury has further examples at hand involving other companies.

The good news in this context is that the draft of an employee data protection act, announced by the current coalition government and sharply criticised by the BigBrotherAwards jury last year, has not been realised. Video monitoring in the way practised in the Apple Stores would have been largely legalised.

In light of the scandals in recent years involving illegal video surveillance at Lidl and other firms, it surprises us that Apple Retail GmbH Germany should not have learned a lesson here. This encroachment on the personal rights of employees and customers simply does not fit the company’s sales motto, “making life better” (“Das Leben schöner machen”¹). Apple Retail’ online job portal explains explicitly to applicants that they work “for the good”. The employees are “permitted” to show their customers how they can “enrich their lives” with the products they sell. All this under the motto “regardless of what you do here, you are part of something big”. Whoever rises to the challenge of such a position will “become inspired” and “be proud”. That the path to inspiration and pride involves being permanently watched by Big Brother, remains delicately concealed in the company prose. Reference to all-encompassing video monitoring of employees and customers would of course not fit the image of a modern lifestyle company.

We are reminded of the person who inspired the the name BigBrotherAwards, George Orwell. In the novel “1984”, the ever-present “telescreen” corresponds precisely to the type of video surveillance which increasingly seems to be implemented without shame or reflection these days:

“Any sound that Winston [the novel’s main character] made above a low whisper would be picked up by it; moreover (…) he could be seen (…). There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time.”²

Almost forgotten is the depressing conclusion of the novel. After his arrest and brainwashing Winston Smith observes in the last two sentences:

“He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”³

And here is the link to the Apple world and other modern businesses: There are companies which, like the Big Brother in Owell's novel, expect their employees to subjugate themselves to the company philosophy. Including the signature on a consent agreement allowing potentially total surveillance.

If the employers in Apple Stores want their employees to enjoy “a better life”, then they should simply remove the criticised cameras.

Congratulations on your BigBrotherAward, Apple Retail Germany GmbH.

The BigBrotherAward 2012 in the “Communication” category goes to the Cloud as a trend that deprives users of control over their own data. To move address books and photos – in other words, other people’s data – or archives, sales information and company secrets to the impenetrable fog that is the Cloud, is at least reckless. Almost all Cloud storage providers are American companies – and therefore obliged by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to allow US authorities access to all data, even if the server farms are situated on European soil. This is a glaring violation of the fundamental right to the confidentiality and integrity of IT systems, a right that was introduced into German law by the Federal Constitutional Court in 2008.

The full English text is not yet available, sorry.

The BigBrotherAward in the category “Economy” goes to Mr Markus Hankammer, CEO of Brita GmbH, for the firm’s water vending machines, marketed under the name “Schoolwater”. These machines deliver water only when a school child taps them with a bottle that is bugged with an RFID chip. Several times in recent years, we have highlighted the threats posed by radio chips, which can be read without touch or line of sight and without the bearer noticing it. This waterbottle system is a glaring example of the industry’s attempts to establish a culture of overtechnisation, surveillance and blatant paternalism from early childhood. We also criticise that this system turns water into an expensive and exclusive foodstuff, instead of providing it without restriction to children in school in order to advance public health.

The full text is not yet available in English, sorry.