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The BigBrotherAward 2011 in the “Politics” Category goes to The Interior Minister of the federal state of Lower Saxony, Uwe Schünemann (CDU, Germany’s conservative party), for the first proven instance of German police using a miniature surveillance drone at a political gathering. During demonstrations and protest events against the transport of nuclear waste in the Wendland region in November 2010, there have been four instances of “flying eyes” covertly spying on and controlling demonstrators from the air. Such airborne surveillance is highly disputed in legal circles – it can violate personality rights of the affected persons, and it can have highly intimidating and deterring effects on participants of a public gathering.

The BigBrotherAward in the “Mobility” category goes to Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s major railway company, which does everything conceivable to make trail travel without surveillance impossible. Digital coercion is always increased: More and more tickets can only be bought in digital and personalised forms, the Bahncard discount card was abolished in its physical form. Passengers are pressed to us the “DB Navigator” app, which users trackers that can not be rejected.

This is not an award for a single candidate, but a pointer to a larger problem: Technology that patronises us, nannies us und unnerves with a know-it-all attitude, that takes decisions away from people, observes them continually, and will not allow deviations, exceptions, let alone individualism. It sanctions us with punishing beeps, snitching to governments or even by refusing to work.

The BigBrotherAward 2015 in the category Administration is awarded to the Federal Intelligence Agency (Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND), because of its intimate entanglement with the NSA’s surveillance network, which is contrary to human rights. The BND collects millions of telecommunications data records every day and transfers massive amounts of such records to the NSA and its associates, including constitutionally protected data of German citizens. Despite these excesses and the brazen cover-up of its illegal practices, the agency is not reined in by the legislator, but continues to be digitally upgraded.

Germany’s two market-leading highstreet opticians, Apollo Optik and Fielmann, are awarded for selling Ray-Ban/Meta smart glasses. These spying glasses facilitate secret video and audio recording in everyday situations, normalising total surveillance of all human activity. By distributing this stalker-ware, the opticians share responsibility for this development.

The BigBrotherAward in the consumer protection category goes to the Swedish company Klarna Bank AB. Klarna intransparently bundles data and power as a shopping service, payment service provider, price comparison portal, personal finance manager, solvency checker and bank.