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Deutsch: Big Brother Awards 2010 in Tschechien

The sixth edition of the Czech Big Brother Awards has recently been organised by EDRi member Iuridicum Remedium in Prague BIO eye where an expert jury selected the winners for 2010 from more than 140 nominations.

The Czech police received the Big Brother award in the long-term spying category, for having violated people's privacy by "their serious and long-term interference in people's privacy, mainly for archiving photographs of cars and its drivers from camera-monitoring systems," as the organiser explained. The police was also criticised for its overuse of applications for access to sensitive data from mobile phones.

For the second year in a row, Facebook received the mock award as the largest corporate spy, for pushing users to enable anybody to have access to private data by its deceptive strategy and technical parameters. Facebook gets the maximum information from personal profiles, increasing their commercial potential.

The Interior Ministry was given the award in the category of the biggest official spying, for having hindered the preparation of the legislation for the improvement of personal data protection from camera monitoring systems, wiretapping and DNA databases.

Even the European Union received an award, at spying among nations category, for the negotiations in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and for funding the INDECT project aimed at developing computer programmes to detect "abnormal behaviour". The project will research the use of CCTV systems in combination with audio recordings in urban areas. For the surveillance of citizens on the Internet, the system focuses on monitoring forums, blogs and social networks. The end users of the system will be a European police force.

The winner in the category of "The Big Brother's statement" was "Facebook father" Mark Zuckerberg for his statement that the right to privacy is simply a social norm developing over time and that people are now satisfied with eliminating privacy. In his opinion, "the age of privacy is over."

ACTA got the award at the legal standard category for disregarding human rights in favour of the industry.

The positive award for privacy protection was obtained by the citizens in Vir nad Svratkou, South Moravia, for having stood up against the installation of a camera monitoring system in their village.

Police receive mock award for violating privacy (11.11.2010)
http://www.praguemonitor.com/2010/11/11/police-receive-mock-award-viol...

Big Brother Awards, Award for long-term spying gained Police (only in Czech, 10.11.2010)
http://www.slidilove.cz/content/cenu-big-brother-awards-za-dlouhodobe-...