Winners | BigBrotherAwards

Viele Kabel, die miteinander verbunden sind. Emojis als Knotenpunkte mit einer Dollar-Zunge.

Bild: Collage von Digitalcourage, Foto von Alina Grubnyak (Unsplash-Lizenz, Quelle)

Newspeak (2016)

“Datenreichtum”

The BigBrotherAward 2016 in the Newspeak category goes to the word “Datenreichtum” (data opulence / data maximisation).

Laudator.in

Martin Haase Kai Biermann

Image:Christiaan Colen (Hintergrundbild)CC-BY-SA 2.0 Source

Consumer Protection (2016)

The Generali insurance company is awarded the BigBrotherAward 2016 in the category Consumer Protection because it promises advantages to the insured if they use an app to transfer their fitness data and shopping behaviour to the…

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padeluun

Collage: Zwei Spitzel mit Hut auf der Linken Seite. Rechts daneben eine Art Sticker vom „Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz“. Im Hintergrund eine Straße.

Bild: Collage von Digitalcourage, Grafik von AJ Cann (CC-BY-SA 2.0, Quelle), Hintergrundfoto von Espen Sundve (CC-BY-SA 2.0, Quelle)

Lifetime Achievement (2016)

The Interior Secret Service, “Protection of the Constitution”

The interior secret service known as “Protection of the Constitution” receives a Lifetime BigBrotherAward just as it reaches the official retirement age, for 65 years of violating civil and privacy rights. The “Protection of the…

Laudator.in

Dr. Rolf Gössner

Eine schwarze Datenkrake mit der Aufschrift "change.org". In den Tentakeln hält sie diverse Logos sozialer Medien (Facebook, Twitter, E-Mail). Im Hintergrund blauer Binärcode.

Image:Christiaan Colen (Hintergrundbild)CC-BY-SA 2.0 Source

Economy (2016)

Change.org

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…

Laudator.in

Prof. Dr. Peter Wedde

Image:Dan Farber CC-BY-NC 2.0 Source

Workplace (2016)

IBM Germany

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…

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Frank Rosengart

Image:Digitalcourage CC-BY 4.0

Audience Award (2014)

German Chancellery is caught up

In 2014 we continued our tradition of asking our audience which of the awards they regarded as particularly “impressive, surprising, shocking, or outrageous”.

Image:Susanne HolzgräfeCC-BY 3.0

Audience Award (2015)

A Tight Race

We asked our audience again in 2015 which of our “winners” they found especially “impressive, surprising, shocking, or outrageous”.

Ein Motherboard. Darauf kleine Figürchen der Spurensicherung in Schutzanzügen.

Image:Hans-Peter CC-BY 2.0 Source

Newspeak (2015)

Securing Digital Evidence

As an example for incessant attempts to foist telecommunications data retention on the public, the term “securing digital evidence” (“digitale Spurensicherung”) is given the Newspeak award. It is just one of many neologisms…

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Kai Biermann

Portraitaufnahmen von Hans-Peter Friedrich (links) und Thomas de Maizière (rechts).

Bild: Komposition Sebastian Lisken (CC-BY-SA 3.0), Dan Taylor (links – CC-BY 2.0, Quelle), Metropolico.org (rechts – CC-BY-SA 2.0, Quelle)

Politics (2015)

Thomas de Maizière and Hans-Peter Friedrich

Federal Minister of the Interior, Thomas de Maizière, and former Federal Minister of the Interior, Hans-Peter Friedrich receive the BigBrotherAward in the Politics category for systematically and fundamentally sabotaging EU plans…

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Max Schrems

Detailaufnahme einer Gesundheitskarte, die zum Teil aus einer Geldbörse guckt.

Image:Tim Reckmann CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0 Source

Consumer Protection (2015)

Federal Ministry of Health

The Federal Ministry of Health, represented by the current minister of Health, Hermann Gröhe, receives the BigBrotherAward 2015 in the “Consumer Protection” category. With its “e‑health” projects, the ministry has severely…

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padeluun

Ein Amazon-Logistikzentrum aus der Ferne. Vor dem Gebäude stehen mehrere LKWs.

Image:Dominik MüllerCC-BY 3.0

Workplace (2015)

Amazon Logistik

The Amazon subsidiaries in Bad Hersfeld and Koblenz receive the BigBrotherAward 2015 in the “Workplace” category for conditions in their employment contracts that violate employees’ personal rights. The companies demand that…

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Prof. Dr. Peter Wedde

Ein Amazon-Logistikzentrum aus der Ferne.

Image:Dominik MüllerCC-BY-SA 3.0

Business (2015)

Amazon Mechanical Turk and Elance-oDesk

The crowd-working platforms Amazon Mechanical Turk and Elance-oDesk receive the BigBrotherAward 2015 in the Economy category for realising digital day-labourship. A trend which will not only turn our working environment inside-out…

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Rena Tangens

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”.

Credits

More about us

Organised by (among others):

BigBrotherAwards International

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