Winners

The “Technical Committee CYBER” of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) receives the BigBrotherAward 2019 in the “Technology” Category for its efforts to establish a predetermined breaking point in the new…

The company Precire of Aachen, Germany receives the BigBrotherAward 2019 in the “Communications” Category for the speech analysis software. Precire is not only used to preselect job candidates, but also by call centres to analyse…

The company Ancestry.com receives the BigBrotherAward 2019 in the Biotechnology Category for enticing people with an interest in genealogy into submitting saliva samples. Ancestry.com sells genetic data to commercial…

The Hessian Minister of the Interior, Peter Beuth, receives the BigBrotherAward 2019 in the “Authorities & Administration” Category for the acquisition and use of an analysis software by Palantir, a company close to the CIA that…

In our new venue we continued the tradition of asking our audience which award they had found particularly “impressive, surprising, shocking, or outrageous”.

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…

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…

The BigBrotherAward 2018 in the “Administration” Category goes to Cevisio Software und Systeme GmbH & Co. KG in Torgau, Germany, for their software Cevisio Quartiermanagement (QMM), which is used in refugee shelters. This software…

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…

The company “Soma Analytics” receives the BigBrotherAward 2018 in the “Workplace” category for their efforts to propagate their health app “Kelaa” and the “Kelaa Dashboard” among the human resources departments of companies. The…

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…

In 2017 we continued the cherished tradition of asking our audience at the end of the gala which award they found particularly “impressive, astonishing, shocking, revolting, …”. As last year we had a clear winner, although this…