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The 2007 Ceremony for the German Big Brother Awards called "Oscars for Data Leeches" took place on 12 October in Bielefeld when the jury had the difficult task of choosing from more than 500 nominations. The negative Big Brother Awards Germany, which have started in 2000, are organised by EDRI-member, FoeBuD Association.

For the category Workplace, the winner of this year award was Novartis Pharma GmbH company for having spied on its employees. Although the company has joined the "FairCompany Initiative", has committed itself to the "Voluntary Self-control For The Pharmaceutical Industry" code of conduct and boasts on its respect for fair work conditions and human rights, at the same time it sends detectives to follow its sales people to take notes on their visits to pharmacies and GPs. Following these "reports" the company sends appraisals to the employees through its HR department.

Hamburg Municipal Education and Sports Authority won the award for the Regional Category for having introduced a Central Register of Pupils for all pupils and students, which is permanently compared with the Register of Residents in order to find children and parents without a residence permit. The Alien Registration Office has access to these files. Due to this register, parents are taking their children out of school because they risk to be found and therefore they may be deported. Thus, Hamburg acts against the right of access to education which applies to all children with or without a residence permit.

For the Business category, Deutsche Bahn AG (the German Railways PLC) was declared winner. The company has introduced as many measures as possible to identify its travellers, from personalised online ticket selling, to the mandatory provision of photo and date of birth for discount passes, video surveillance and up to a RFID chip for the all-inclusive one-year ticket without its customers' knowledge and without any guarantees of personal data protection.

The award for the Consumer Protection category went to Marriott, Hyatt and Intercontinental hotel chains in Germany for keeping personal information on their customers from their eating or drinking preferences, to their credit card data, address, telephone number, hobbies, and even medical type information. What is the most frightening thing is that the customers have no idea all their personal information is stored in the hotel computers and probably in the servers located in the US.

The Technology category was won by PTV Planung Transport Verkehr AG, for their individual rating system of car insurances that uses the "pay-as-you-drive" technology. A piece of equipment is used to record the driving routes and behaviours and then to send the information to the insurance company.

The award for Politics category was received by the Federal Minister of Finance, for the introduction of a permanent Tax ID number for all taxable persons, something like a personal code number which is unconstitutional in Germany. The data is gathered by all the registration authorities in the country and sent to the Federal Central Tax Authority which assigns the unique Tax ID and sends the number back to the registration authorities. "It would be incompatible with the constitutional value of human dignity if the state were to assume the power of compulsive registration and cataloguing of the individual with their complete personality" is the decision given in 1969 by the Federal Constitutional Court, the highest court in Germany.

The Federal Minister of Justice received the award in the Communication category for a bill that goes against the Federal Constitutional Court ruling of 1983 that states as constitutional the collection of non-anonymised data for undetermined or not-yet-determined purposes. The bill of the Ministry of Justice will introduce the retention of all telecommunications connection data in Germany, in agreement of the European directive 2006/24/EC according to which member states have to oblige providers and public communication network operators to retain traffic data. However this directive comes into conflict with the Federal Constitutional Court ruling.

The Government and Administration category was won by Monika Harms, Germany's Federal Prosecutor, for the anti-terror measures against opponents of the G8 summit in May this year, for her decision to collect and preserve body scent samples from G8 opponents and especially for the postal surveillance in Hamburg in search of letters from militant G8 opponents which was a clear violation of the privacy of correspondence and of the professional confidentiality, as stipulated by the German Constitution.

Besides the individual awards on categories, the Jury of the Big Brother Awards also established the most worrying trend at the moment in Germany which is that of the increase in registration of biometric data, by both public and private institutions.

An audience award was attributed for the second time at the German Big Brother Awards and the winner designated by the audience was Monika Harms for the anti-terror measures against opponents of the G8 summit.

German Big Brother Awards 2007 (12.10.2007)
http://www.bigbrotherawards.de/2007