On 4 June EDRI-member EFFI organised a second annual Big Brother Ceremony. The award in the public sector was given to YTV, a firm that controls public transport in the Helsinki region. The company received the award for its new electronical ticket system that stores individual passenger information, including social security numbers. Anonymous cards were available, but in practice only for business purposes, at a much higher price. Only after a long struggle with the the Finnish data protection agency YTV finally changed their mind and concluded that the system could also work without any identification of the passengers.

For the Big Brother Award in the business category there was really only one candidate. Sonera, the biggest telephone company in Finland, was caught analysing the traffic data from the mobile phones of at least 50 customers, both employees and outsiders, in order to find out who had been leaking confidential corporate information to the press. The analysis didn't produce a suspect. At least 5 senior staff members were arrested (but later released) including the company executive officer (CEO). They will most likely face criminal charges.

A positive award was given to the Finnish ISPs, who have been very successful in their lobby against mandatory retention of telecom traffic data. Governmental plans for a 2 year period were withdrawn. Finnish providers are now required to retain traffic data for a period of 3 weeks. A honourable mention was given to Finnair, because of the companies refusal so far to hand-over passenger data to the US government.

Pictures and description of BBA ceremony (translation in English will follow soon)
http://www.effi.org/yksityisyys/bb2003/index.html?setlang=en

YTV English web page:
http://www.ytv.fi/matkakortti/english/index.html

More arrests in Sonera snooping probe (The Register - 26.11.2002)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/28295.html

(Contribution by Ville Oksanen, EFFI)