Summary: The BigBrotherAward 2011 in the “Workplace” category goes to the German Federal Customs Administration. They allow themselves to be exploited by the Russian state as they require German companies to cross-check their employees against Russian anti-terror lists. These lists are compiled by the Russian secret service FSB (formerly KGB) pursuant to a confidential Russian law. In consequence, energy companies, for example, that comply with the obligations of the Federal Customs Administration will subsequently be favoured by GASPROM for energy supplies. There are now several hundred German companies participating in the process. – Attention: April Fool's Day! – It is not GASPROM that is favouring customers, but European and American companies. To participate in trade facilitation agreements, companies are asked to agree to voluntary security checks. These involve cross-checking employee data against European and sometimes US anti-terror lists, even though this practice is prohibited by German data protection legislation.

A look at two earlier “winners”, and what happened then …

More and more data is raised “incidentally”. Some could be avoided, but not all. We must think about rules that could make a digitally networked world worth living in – each one of us and most of all, all of us together. Because we do of course have something to hide and protect: our private sphere.

Summary: The BigBrotherAward 2009 in the “Business” category is given to a handful of German companies that sell Internet and phone surveillance technology and earn good money that way, while preferring to stay unnoticed themselves.

Summary: The BigBrotherAward in the “Sports” category goes to the Local Organising Committee of the 2009 World Championships in Athletics, Berlin. It is given for their forcing journalists to agree to a comprehensive check of their personal data by the security authorities. Barely disguised under a cloak named “security”, they have committed a serious offence against a fundamental value of the free state: the freedom of the press.

The BigBrotherAward 2009 in the “Workplace” category goes to all those consumed by the delusion that you will get productive and motivated staff if you subject them to comprehensive monitoring and make their performance measurable by numbers. As a representative and winner on points, farm machines manufacturer Claas Landmaschinen (internationally known as Claas Group) receives the award for the bugged harvesting machines.

Summary: The BigBrotherAward 2008 in the category “Consumers” goes to the members of the 16th German Bundestag (the Lower House in Germany’s Federal Parliament), represented by Dr. Norbert Lammert, President of the Bundestag, for waving through a number of laws which enforce the collection, long-term storing and sharing of detailed data of travellers.

Summary: The BigBrotherAward 2008 in the “Consumers” category goes to the Work Group of German Market and Social Research Institutes (Arbeitskreis Deutscher Markt- und Sozialforschungsinstitute e.V., ADM), represented by its chairman Mr Hartmut Scheffler, further representing the Work Group of the Association of Social Science Institutes (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Sozialwissenschaftliche Institute e.V.), the Professional Association of German Market and Social Researchers (Berufsverband Deutscher Markt- und Sozialforscher e.V.) and the German Association for Online Research (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Online-Forschung e.V.) — for their recommendation in a guideline to have consumer interviews by telephone monitored secretly, and to continue propagating this illegal guideline even after protests from the data protection authorities.

Summary: The BigBrotherAward 2008 in the “Europe/EU” category goes to The Council of the European Union (EU Ministers Council) in Brussels, represented by the Council’s President, Bernard Kouchner / Secretary General, Javier Solana. The EU Ministers Council receives the BigBrotherAward for the EU terror list.

Summary: The BigBrotherAward 2008 in the “Health and Social Services” category goes to Deutsche Angestellten-Krankenkasse (“German Employees’ Health Insurance”, DAK, a statutory health insurer), represented by their CEO, Prof. Dr. h.c. Herbert Rebscher, for the unauthorised sharing of 200.000 chronically ill patients’ data with a private company, without giving information to the insurance customers or asking for their consent.

Summary: The BigBrotherAward 2008 in the category “Politics” goes to the Ministry of Economy and Technology, represented by Minister Michael Glos, for passing the law about the ELENA procedure und the associated forced introduction of the electronic signature.

Summary: The BigBrotherAward in the “Workplace and Communications” category goes to Deutsche Telekom AG (German Telecom, plc) for their illegal use of telecommunication connections data to snoop on Telekom supervisory board members and journalists.

The BigBrotherAwards highlight individual cases – but often it is easy to see common phenomena or themes. The jury has been asking itself which themes are “on the rise” currently. Here is one where we fear exactly that to be happening.

Summary: The BigBrotherAward 2007 in the “Business” category goes to Deutsche Bahn AG (German Railways PLC), represented by its CEO, Hartmut Mehdorn, for their systematic endeavours to make anonymous travelling practically impossible: abandoning ticket counters, ticket machines not accepting cash, personalised ticket selling on the internet, birth date and photo as mandatory items for buying the discount pass (BahnCard), ubiquitous video surveillance, an RFID chip in the all-inclusive one-year ticket (BahnCard 100) without customers being informed, and much more.

Summary: The BigBrotherAward in the “Communication” category goes to the Federal Minister of Justice, Ms Brigitte Zypries, for a bill that will introduce the retention of all telecommunications connection data in Germany. With this bill, the Minister is deliberately ignoring jurisdiction by the Federal Constitutional Court, which had ruled in 1983 in its census verdict that the collection of non-anonymised data for undetermined or not-yet-determined purposes is unconstitutional.

Summary: The BigBrotherAward 2007 in the “Consumer Protection” category goes to the international hotel chains in Germany, Marriott, Hyatt and Intercontinental (representing many others), for their collection and centralised storing of critical personal information of customers without their knowledge. This includes drinking and eating habits, use of pay TV, allergies, all private and professional addresses, credit card data, complaints, all kinds of preferences – everything is kept.

Summary: The BigBrotherAward in the “Government and Administration” category goes to Germany’s Federal Prosecutor (Generalbundesanwältin), Monika Harms. She receives the BigBrotherAward for her anti-terror measures against opponents of the G8 summit in May this year, particularly for systematic postal surveillance in Hamburg and for her instructions to collect and preserve body scent samples from G8 opponents suspected of militancy.

Summary: Not a winner in 2007: the Federal Minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Schäuble.

With more than 500 nominations, the BigBrotherAwards jury has had to manage a record workload this year – a kind of data mining for data protection and civic rights. It is therefore all the more important to point out that “below” the laureates, there are many cases of illegal activities, data greed, but also sheer impudence and carelessness. To make sure that they don’t go completely scot-free, we briefly introduce some of the “unlucky losers” that didn’t quite make it to the “podium of shame”.

Summary: The BigBrotherAward in the “Politics” category goes to the Federal Minister of Finance, Mr Peer Steinbrück, for introducing a life-long Tax ID number for all taxable persons, which bears an eerie resemblance to the unconstitutional concept of a personal code number.

Summary: The BigBrotherAward in the “Regional” category goes to the Municipal Authority for Education and Sports of the City of Hamburg, represented by Ms Alexandra Dinges-Dierig, Senator for Education and Sports, for introducing a central register for all pupils and students with the (further) purpose of finding foreign families without a residence permit.

Summary: The BigBrotherAward 2007 in the “Technology” category goes to PTV Planung Transport Verkehr AG, represented by Dr Hans Hubschneider, for their system for individual rating of car insurances with the so-called “pay-as-you-drive” technology, i.e. a device that records routes and driving behaviour in a car and transmits these data to the insurance company.

Summary: The Novartis Pharma GmbH receives the BigBrotherAward in the “Workplace” category for spying on sales personnel by detectives and deliberately breaching promises of anonymity in employee surveys.

About Big Brother on German highways, a fee for computers with access to the internet, a radio or a TV card, RFID politics in Europe, and how that's related to the German BigBrotherAwards.

And the winner is: the Federal Conference of Ministers for Education. For plans to introduce life-long student IDs, without binding the individual educational data to a defined purpose, nor guarding them against misuse and unauthorised access.

Summary: The BigBrotherAward in this category goes to: SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), for sharing bank transfer data with US authorities.

Summary: The award in this category was well earned by the German Insurers’ Association for its “warnings and indications” database, which insurers use to exchange substantial amounts of data about millions of citizens — with undisclosed criteria, without sufficient legal foundation, and unknown to the people affected.

Not all nominees for the Big Brother Award have made it. Several times, the jury had great difficulty not to sanction a violation of data protection with one of our unwanted prizes. But data leeches who think they might run off unharmed only because we hand out too few main prizes are harbouring a false sense of security. Because there still are our notes of disapproval.

In this year two “lucky winners” achieve awards in this category: the members of the Fourth Parliament of the State of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania for legislation that allows eavesdropping and sound recording in public space. And the Federal Conference of the Ministers of the Interior for their decision to install a centralised anti-terror data-base.