A non-competitor

Wolfgang Schäuble does not receive an award in 2007. At first glance, this is surprising, as non-laudator Rolf Gössner readily admits. But this non-winner is far from alone in his quest to fight terrorism at the cost of civil rights. Sorry, but the next BBA is soon to come, we’re sure! More “lucky“ winners are German Railways (Deutsche Bahn), two federal government ministers and the Federal Prosecutor General.

The (unfortunate) Awardees

Workplace (2007)

Novartis

The Novartis Pharma GmbH receives the BigBrotherAward in the “Workplace” category for spying on sales personnel by detectives and deliberately breaching promises of anonymity in employee surveys.

Laudator.in
Business (2007)

Deutsche Bahn

The BigBrotherAward 2007 in the “Business” category goes to Deutsche Bahn AG (German Railways PLC), represented by its CEO, Hartmut Mehdorn, for their systematic endeavours to make anonymous travelling practically impossible…

Laudator.in
Consumer Protection (2007)

Hotel Chains

The BigBrotherAward 2007 in the “Consumer Protection” category goes to the international hotel chains in Germany, Marriott, Hyatt and Intercontinental (representing many others), for their collection and centralised storing of…

Laudator.in
Technology (2007)

PTV

The BigBrotherAward 2007 in the “Technology” category goes to PTV Planung Transport Verkehr AG, represented by Dr Hans Hubschneider, for their system for individual rating of car insurances with the so-called “pay-as-you-drive”…

Laudator.in
Reprimands & Commendation (2007)

Notes of Disapproval

With more than 500 nominations, the BigBrotherAwards jury has had to manage a record workload this year – a kind of data mining for data protection and civic rights. It is therefore all the more important to point out that “below”…

Jury

Portraitaufnahme von Karin Schuler.

Karin Schuler

Deutsche Vereinigung für Datenschutz (DVD)
Alvar Freude am Redner.innenpult während der BigBrotherAwards 2008.

Alvar Freude

Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft (FITUG)
padeluun am Redner.innenpult der BigBrotherAwards 2021.

padeluun

Digitalcourage
Rena Tangens am Redner.innenpult der BigBrotherAwards 2021.

Rena Tangens

Digitalcourage
Frank Rosengart am Redner.innenpult der BigBrotherAwards 2021.

Frank Rosengart

Chaos Computer Club (CCC)
Werner Hülsmann am Redner.innenpult der BigBrotherAwards 2004.

Werner Hülsmann

Forum InformatikerInnen für Frieden und gesellschaftliche Verantwortung (FIfF)
Portraitaufnahme von Fredrik Roggan.

Dr. Fredrik Roggan

Humanistische Union (HU)
Portraitaufnahme von Rolf Gössner.

Dr. Rolf Gössner

Internationale Liga für Menschenrechte (ILFM)

Trends

The BigBrotherAwards highlight individual cases – but often it is easy to see common phenomena or themes. The jury has been asking itself which themes are “on the rise” currently. Here is one where we fear exactly that to be…

Updates to the Awards 2007

Unfortunately, we do not have the capacity to translate our updates into English.

Updates

About BigBrotherAwards

In a compelling, entertaining and accessible format, we present these negative awards to companies, organisations, and politicians. The BigBrotherAwards highlight privacy and data protection offenders in business and politics, or as the French paper Le Monde once put it, they are the “Oscars for data leeches”.

Organised by (among others):

BigBrother Awards International (Logo)

BigBrotherAwards International

The BigBrotherAwards are an international project: Questionable practices have been decorated with these awards in 19 countries so far.