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The education minister of the federal state of Baden-Württemberg, Susanne Eisenmann, receives the BigBrotherAward in the “Education” category because she intends to let Microsoft run essential services of the state’s digital education platform.

Microsoft Germany, represented by Sabine Bendiek, Chairwoman of the Management Board, receives the BigBrotherAward 2018 in the Technology category for implanting telemetry (i.e. the transmission of diagnostic data) in Windows 10 that is almost impossible to deactivate. Even skilled users will hardly be able to stop this data from being transmitted.

IBM Germany receives the BigBrotherAward 2016 in the “Workplace” Category for the software “Social Dashboard”, which allows companies to control and evaluate their employees' social behaviour. “Social Dashboard” uses metadata from the in-house social network system “Connections” and creates a score and a “social ranking” for likes and shares. It is an attempt at leaving the evaluation of social interactions to a machine. It will create wrong incentives and more pressure at work.

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 2018 in the “PR and Marketing” Category goes to the idea of a “Smart City”. The advertising concept of a “Smart City” is used by tech companies to try to sell the idea of a “safe city” to municipal administrations: A city, covered in sensors, under total surveillance, remote-controlled and commercialised. “Smart Cities” reduce their citizens to mere consumers, change consumers into data sources and our democracy into a privatised service.

The BigBrotherAward 2021 in the category “Mobility” goes to the European Commission for the introduction of the “On-Board Fuel Consumption Meter” (OBFCM). The OBFCM collects an extensive amount of technical information about a vehicle and transmits it to the manufacturer along with the vehicle identification number. The OBFCM is mandatory for all new cars as of 1 Jan 2021.

US company and campaign platform change.org receives the BigBrotherAward 2016 in the Economy category for its business model of marketing personally identifiable information of signatories together with their political statements. Change.org appears to be an progressive and social project, but it really is a for-profit US corporation which shows many deficiencies with respect to data protection law. For example, it continues to store user data in the USA although the Court of Justice of the European Union has declared the “Safe Harbor” Framework invalid.