Big Brother Awards 2009
UPDATE: Read and hear all about the 2009 edition on Radio Netherlands Worldwide (04.02.10). An overview of media coverage in Dutch can be found here.
Who wins a prestigious Big Brother Award at the upcoming ceremonies in Amsterdam? Find out at the sixth edition of the Big Brother Awards The Netherlands, to be held on 5 February 2010 in De Balie!
The Big Brother Awards ‘honor’ individuals, companies, government institutions and proposals that have severely violated privacy since the last edition was held. The public has submitted their favourite candidates via e-mail, after which an expert Jury is confronted with the difficult task of recognizing the supreme privacy violations out of these nominees. The decision of the Jury is made public during a glamourous Awards ceremonies, where the Awards are presented to the lucky winners!
Since Privacy International held the first Big Brother Awards in the United Kingdom (1998), the number of countries to host the event is rapidly growing. The Dutch digital civil rights movement Bits of Freedom gave birth to the first Big Brother Awards in The Netherlands in 2002, and has been organizing five editions ever since - make sure to view the results of the last edtion below.
The expert Jury for the Big Brother Awards 2009 consists of:
- Karin Spaink (Chair).
- Prof. dr. Bart Jacobs.
- Dr. Bart Schermer.
- Prof. dr. Nico van Eijk.
- Prof. dr. Valerie Frissen.
- Bart de Koning.
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Winner Dutch Big Brother Awards 2007: You!
[26.09.2007]
The Dutch Big Brother Award 2007 in the Individual category has been awarded to the Dutch citizen. He is the biggest threat to privacy according to the jury. Due to indifference – “I have nothing to hide” – and lack of interest in what happens to their personal data, citizens share responsibility for the disappearance of privacy in The Netherlands. While Time magazine praised ‘You’ as person of the year, the jury gives ‘You’ an award for your acceptance of far reaching intrusions upon your privacy.
In the Corporate category the Dutch railroad service (NS) were the winner. It has a dominant role in the implementation of a privacy intruding smart card for public transportation. The system will collect, keep and use personally identifiable data on all travel. The NS, the national rail monopoly, penalize those who wish to travel anonymously. The NS were present to receive the award. Five minutes later they received a warning from guest speaker Jacob Kohnstamm, chair of Dutch Data Protection Authority. He confirmed that their current privacy policy is not in line with data protection legislation. He promised severe penalties if they introduce the system without changes to their policy on the use of personal data.
De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), the Dutch central bank, received the award for government institutions. DNB looked the other way when it was informed about the transfer of financial records to American authorities through SWIFT. Following the discovery of the central bank’s knowledge, DNB defended itself by stating that the privacy of Dutch citizens is not one of its responsibilities.
The Electronic Child Dossier won in the Proposal category. The blind trust of authorities that problems will be solved by registration of personal data is shocking. To implement the Dossier, Youth and Families Minister Rouvoet plans on establishing a centralized database of all Dutch children. A file will be updated for every child until they reach the age of nineteen. and the file will be kept for another 15 years after that. The dataset is very broadly defined and will contain a wide variety of medical and psychosocial data, including all sorts of subjective opinions about children and their parents.
The Big Brother Awards put individuals, companies, government institutions and proposals that violate privacy in the spotlight. The jury announced the winners at the fifth Dutch Big Brother Awards ceremony on 21 September 2007 in De Balie in Amsterdam. The jury consisted of lawyer Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm, legal researcher and advisor Bart Schermer, Professor of Computer Security Bart Jacobs, Professor of Regulation & Technology Bert-Jaap Koops, Professor of Law & Information Science Corien Prins and author Karin Spaink (Chair). The Dutch Big Brother Awards are organized by Bits of Freedom.
