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Amazon receives the BigBrotherAward 2018 in the “Consumer Protection” category for its nosy, impertinent, all-too clever and gossipy bugging operation in a can by the name of Alexa. It is well known that Alexa’s speech recordings are processed in the Cloud. What is award-worthy is the fact that these recordings are also stored in the Cloud and that they can be played back even months later. That makes it possible to monitor everyone present in the home, and it is unclear who else is given access to the recordings.

The BigBrotherAward in the category “Technology” goes to Gamma Group, represented in Germany by Gamma International in Munich, personally by its general manager Stephan Oelkers, for their software “FinFisher”. Gamma advertises the ability of its product to exploit security vulnerabilities in iTunes and Skype to plant spyware on the target system, for example by using fake software updates. It also markets the ability of its software “FinSpy Mobile” to remotely access Blackberry personal mobile devices. Gamma software products are being sold to domestic and foreing state agencies. Among other locations it was found during the storming of the headquarters of the Egyptian secret service in Cairo by civil rights activists.

Trends Companies allow themselves generous conditions for sharing data 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. ID cards copied for any…

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.

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.

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.

The German Federal Military (“Bundeswehr”) and the Federal Minister of Defence receive the 2017 Big Brother Award in the category Authorities and Administration for the military’s massive digital arms build-up including the new “Commando Cyberspace and Information Space” (“Kommando Cyber- und Informationsraum”, KdoCIR). This digital combat unit with a planned strength of 14,000 personnel is to prepare the German military for cyber warfare – including military cyber attacks on other countries’ IT systems and critical infrastructure. This militarisation of the Internet means the Federal Republic will take part in the global cyber arms race – without parliamentary control, without democratic oversight and without legal basis.

The parliamentary groups for the Christian-Democratic and the Green parties in the state parliament of Hesse receive the BigBrotherAward 2018 in the Politics category for their plans for a new domestic intelligence law. The draft by the “black-green coalition” contains an accumulation of grave surveillance powers that facilitate severe interferences with fundamental rights: So-called state trojans are to be used to secretly infect and investigate “suspect” computers, employees of projects to further democratic society are to be screened by intelligence agencies and, in a legal novelty, criminal undercover agents are to be exempted from persecution. All in all, this is a severe attack on democracy, on the rule of law, and on fundamental rights.