On 22 January 2005, the jury of the French Big Brother Awards needed no less than 7 of the famous negative Big Brother Awards to name and shame projects, people, institutions and companies for destroying privacy and promoting control. The minister of Health, Mr Douste-Blazy received a special Jury Award for promoting a new law that created the 'Dossier Medical Partagé', renamed 'Dossier Medical Personnel' (from 'shared medical record' to 'personal medical record'), that puts the entire medical records of every citizen on the internet, in order to spend less money and 'optimise' French medical care.
The Lifetime Menace Award was presented to the 3 French 'homeland security' ministers Vaillant (left wing), Sarkozy & Perben (right wing), who introduced new DNA-sampling powers, not just for sexual & violent criminals, but for every kind of suspects and for minor offences.
A new Award was invented by the French organisers to honour the creative use of language to hide the real meaning, accurately described in George Orwells 1984 as newspeak. The first Novlang Award was presented to Gixel, a trade association of manufacturers of electronic interconnect systems, components and subsystems. They propose to 'educate' children under 6 (and their parents) about the usefulness of biometric products, helping the government to spread 'security values'.
Other winners include 3 MPs that wish to impose GPS empowered electronic bracelets on sexual offenders, after having served their prison sentence, for a period of 30 years, and 2 city officials in Marne, who ordered social workers to give them detailed records about every citizen they were trying to help.
During the ceremony a positive Voltaire award was presented to members of the humanitarian organisation C-Sur, who were accused of being 'criminals' for helping 'illegal' foreigners, after a new French law put this kind of humanitarian activism under a 'presumption of culpability' regime. Another positive award was given to Charles Hoareau, an unionist who refused to give his DNA sample after having been engaged in a fight with policemen during the illegal expulsion of a foreigner without papers. He told the policemen it was OK to give them his saliva, but only if he could spit on them, rather than being obliged to open his mouth to let them take the sample.
Press release French Big Brother Awards (22.01.2005)
http://www.bigbrotherawards.eu.org/2004/eng.php
List of all 30 BBA nominees (in French)
http://nomines.bigbrotherawards.eu.org/