During the Big Brother Awards ceremony in Budapest, Hungary on 25 November 2004, the People's Award was presented to the Data Protection Commissioner, Attila Péterfalvi. He was chosen with a large majority of 917 votes (39,8%) from 2.342 valid votes. He was given the negative price for making official statements that could erode the Hungarian privacy culture, including a statement that it was right from a legal point of view to install CCTVs in fitting rooms. Acting like a good sport, Péterfalvi joined the ceremony and received the award. But earlier, he had sent an official letter from the Hungarian Data Protection Agency warning the Hungarian organisers that he would ask Privacy International to erase them from the list of official Big Brother Award organisers.

The Ministry of Employment and Labour won a Big Brother Award for its project EMMA (Egységes Munkaügyi Nyilvántartás). It is a centralised database containing personal information about every Hungarian employee, without any purpose that would make it justifiable under constitutional privacy protection.

Last week Big Brother Awards were presented in 3 different countries to a wide range of government officials, companies and institutions for violating privacy and promoting extensive control over citizens lives.

Seville in Spain hosted the 50st BBA event held worldwide on 30 October 2004, 6 years since Privacy International invented the ceremony in London. The Spanish jury awarded Zara, a fashion clothing store chain belonging to giant Inditex, for using RFID chips in some of their products. The Spanish jury also awarded a price to the shadow-government ordering the confiscation of servers of Indymedia in London. Shadow-government because "unfortunately, we are still to be told who that government is."

In Austria, a remarkable peoples price was awarded to the electric company of the city of Linz, for trying to stifle critics. Radio technicians discovered the powerline-technology could produce radio-interference. The technicians were not invited to discuss and help solve the issue, but sued for 'damage of credit', with a very intimidating demand for compensation of financial damages. On top of that a lawyer of the Linz Strom GmbH intervened in his role as member of the supervisory board of an Austrian media company to prevent the criticism from being spread.

4 Big Brother Award ceremonies will take place within the next 2 weeks. The Netherlands will start on Sunday 24 October, followed by a ceremony in Austria on 26 October, and ceremonies in Germany and Spain on 29 October.

For the Dutch BBA 3 persons were nominated in the category 'Persons'. Minister Remkes of the Interior, for a constant stream of proposals to enable intelligence services to data-mine data about innocent citizens and create more satellite interception capacity. EU Commissioner Bolkestein for closing a deal with US authorities to make the EU set aside its privacy principles in order to make it legitimate for airline companies to transfer all kinds of data about passengers to the US. Finally, the head of police of the city of Utrecht is lined up for a Big Brother Award for proposing the police should publish pictures of recurrent criminals on the Internet and in local magazines. The 12 nominations have 1 tendency in common: the fact that government is specialising in the collection of immense amounts of 'soft' data on innocent citizens.

The winners of the fifth Swiss Big Brother Awards were announced on Saturday 16 October, during the awards ceremony in the impressive old Steeltec industrial hall in Emmenbrücke (Lucerne). Half of the 52 public nominations were sent in for the 'State' category. The master of ceremony, the actor Ernst Jenni, said he was pleased to see that government was finally learning from corporate marketing practices, and were starting to take their customers more serious. The winner was the commander in chief of the Swiss Air Force, corps commander Hansruedi Fehrlin, for deploying unmanned surveillance drones of the type 'ADS 95 Range', to closely monitor cars, buildings and citizens from an invisible and inaudible height of 1.500 meters. This secret surveillance measure became public when the Luzern police arrested 2 men who had driven into a forest near Emmen to smoke a joint. It turned out their behaviour was registered by the highly sensitive thermal camera's on board of the drone, and the incident reported by the military observers to the Luzern police.

The organising committee of the Swiss Big Brother Awards today presented a selection of candidates for the Big Brother Award. A jury of 13 well known individuals will choose the winners out of this selection.

Half of the 52 public nominations were sent in for the 'State' category, including several police departments, the district council and the national assembly. The police of Graubunden was nominated for collecting and sharing data of at least 1.000 demonstrators during the World Economic Forum in Davos, and the police of St. Gallen and Zurich were nominated together for unlawfully collecting genetical data. A very original nomination was sent in for the Bern municipal council, for monitoring all the bicycle parking lots in the innercity.

In the 'business category' many public transport companies were nominated for video surveillance. The supermarket chain Migros was nominated for experimenting with RFIDs on individual products, while the national alliance of medical insurance companies risks getting a Big Brother Award for inventing a new tariff-system that displays extensive, very privacy-sensitive diagnostic information on doctors' bills.

On 31 August the deadline closes for nominations for the Swiss Big Brother Awards. The organising committee has already received over 100 nominations and will publish a selection at the end of September 2004. The 5th annual Swiss ceremony of the Big Brother Awards will take place on 16 October in the city of Emmen. The slogan 'Nicht lamentieren, nominieren' (don't lament, nominate!) now calls on a special new category of victims of Big Brother; workers that are being controlled at the work-floor with the help of video-cameras and key-loggers. The other prices follow the international scheme of awarding awards to government, business and to a person for a 'life time achievement'. The Swiss also present a positive prize: The Winkelried Award, named after the legendary soldier Arnold von Winkelried who gave his life in a battle in the 14th century 'for the liberty of the land'.

On 28 July, Privacy International has presented the 6th annual UK Big Brother Awards ceremony. Privacy International took the unusual step of awarding a US initiative for the UK awards because of the almost total silence in the US over this programme. US VISIT will fingerprint all visitors to the US from September of this year. The scheme is offensive and invasive, and has been undertaken with little or no debate or scrutiny. Nor has the requirement taken any account of the 'special relationship' between the UK and the US. The UK government has been silent about the programme and has capitulated every step of the way.

Winner of 'Worst public servant' was Margaret Hodge, Minister of State for Children. According to the jury report, "Margaret Hodge has received numerous nominations because of her patronage of the controversial tracking provisions in the Children Bill and for her determination to develop a wide spectrum of intrusive databases and information systems.

On 28 July, Privacy International will celebrate the 6th annual UK Big Brother Awards ceremony. From about 300 nominees a 'Dirty Dozen' was selected for the shortlist. Award categories for this year are as they have been in past years: Worst Public Servant; Most Invasive Company; Most Appalling Project; Most Heinous Government Organisation and Lifetime Menace (now renamed the 'David Blunkett Lifetime Menace Award').

The number of nominations for Home Secretary Blunkett, the Home Office and the proposed National Identity Card far outweighed all other nominees, but their unpopularity will not be recognised this year because they have received awards in previous years. Among the favourites that are tipped to win is the Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Minister of State for Children for Worst Public Servant. Hodge has received numerous nominations because of her patronage of the controversial tracking provisions in the Children Bill and for her determination to develop a wide spectrum of intrusive databases and information systems.