Yesterday, Privacy International announced the winners of the 5th Annual UK 'Big Brother' awards to the government and private sector organisations that have done the most to invade personal privacy in Britain.

Winner of the award for worst public servant is London Mayor Ken Livingstone, for his efforts in transport surveillance. Prime Minister Tony Blair received the Lifetime Menace Award. Blair earned the award partly because of his plans to force phone companies and Internet service providers to retain user data for 12 months as part of the country's stepped-up war on terrorism and crime.

According to an article in The Guardian, a representative of the Home Office attended the event, but did not take the special award for minister David Blunkett: a (fake) dog poo on a stick. The home secretary has been a long-time target for privacy campaigners, as a result of his support for schemes such as entitlement cards.

In Bulgaria, a Big Brother Award was awarded to the Ministry of Interior Affairs for the double achievement of a proposal to wiretap all internet traffic and the censorship of a satirical homepage.

The draft new Telecommunications Law would have obliged internet service providers to buy wiretapping equipment that would have given police live access to all data traffic going through the networks of the providers. The proposal was stopped just in time and sent back to several parliamentary committees.

In September 2001, the National Unit for Combating Organized Crime traced down and confiscated the computer of the 26-year old individual Lubomir Kolev. His 'crime' was that he published a website under the name of a Bulgarian bank, where he made mockery of the election promise of the prime minister to give a rent-free loan of 5000 Leva (EUR 2.500) to every Bulgarian citizen.