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The 2006 German Big Brother awards ceremony took place last week in Bielefeld and it was preceded by the demonstration "Freedom instead of Fear" (Freiheit statt Angst) against Security and Surveillance Delusion, where about 300 people protested against the growth of pervasive surveillance in Germany.

For the first time at the German Big Brother Awards, the audience was asked to decide which of the winners should receive the audience award. After the count of the votes, with thirty-two percent of the polls, the prize went to the winner in the Consumer Protection category, the Association of German Insurers, for its “warnings and indications” database, which insurance

From 19 May to 20 May Florence has hosted the E-Privacy 2006 conference, organized as usual - by the Winston Smith Project with the help of several volunteers.

This edition saw a much larger participation than 2005: the participants could hardly fit the hall of Palazzo Vecchio, and several people had to stand for the whole duration of the event. The number of presentations (19) and participating organizations (14) saw a marked and unexpected growth.

As usual, the Italian Big Brother Awards were given during the conference. Although none of the awards' recipients were present, a mock Darth Vader - prompting hilarity from the public - took the prizes in custody.

The positive prize "Winston Smith - Privacy Hero", which was assigned in 2005 to Stefano Rodotà (former president of the Italian Privacy Authority)

The 6th edition of the French Big Brother Awards taking place in Paris on 3 February has chosen the following in the 5 different award sections, for causing the most damage to personal privacy.

The Orwell Award for State official - the winner was Jean-Michel Charpin, Directeur de l'Insee (INES) for his participation in the INES project (Electronically Secured National Identity card). By this project he created a direct link to the Ministry of Interior Affairs ignoring the separation between population statistics and police administration. The card will include two biometric identifyers on a RFID chip.

The section for enterprises was won by Lidl (at close range to Carrefour) for having installed 65 video cameras for the surveillance of 60 employees in a store. The company has had similar policies in other countries as well.

Dutch Minister Rita Verdonk for Integration and Immigration won a negative Big Brother Award during the Dutch awards ceremony on 28 January 2006 in De Melkweg in Amsterdam.

Minister Verdonk was awarded the price for having handed-over the status of asylum seeker of rejected applicants to their country of origin, for having denied it repeatedly in parliament and for having later minimised the impact of this information.

The jury considered that the gravity of the privacy violation was underexposed. The information about the applicants' attempt to seek asylum might be life threatening for them in their country of origin.

The nominees beaten by minister Verdonk were Dutch minister of Finance Mr. Zalm and crime reporter Peter R. de Vries. Mr. Zalm was nominated for his recent proposal to give banks and other financial service providers access

The sixth edition of Swiss Big Brother Awards ceremony was held in Zurich's Rote Fabrik on 29 October 2005. The Swiss jury received 100 nominations in four categories: government, business, workplace and the special life-time achievement award. The financial services branch of Swiss Post, Postfinance, was awarded the business award for the illegal transfer of bank transaction data to the United States. The transfer became apparent after a Swiss man tried to transfer an amount in US dollars to a Cuban travel agency based in Switzerland. Both bank accounts were registered in Zurich. Although the man assumed the transfer was purely domestic it turned out that Postfinance uses its US partner Western Union for all transactions in US dollars. The man was notified that the US Department of the Treasury had confiscated his money because of the US embargo against Cuba. Postfinance advised him to send a protest to the US authorities in order to get his money back. So much for the Swiss bank secrecy.

On 27 May 2005 the first Big Brother Award Ceremony in Italy, organised by the NGO Winston Smith Project, lead to an extremely unlikely winner. The Award for Lifetime Menace was given to Giuseppe Fortunato, appointed 2 months ago as new member of the Data Protection Authority. According to the jury, Fortunato is one of the very few Italians convicted with a final sentence (the case went all the way to the highest court) for grave offences against privacy. As legal council of the municipality of Naples Fortunato demanded the traffic data of the mobile phones of the Mayor and 5 members of the council. He organised a press conference about the results of his investigation and claimed the phones were used to make private calls. Fortunato obtained the traffic data from mobile operator SIP by claiming the request was authorised by the chair of a special municipal commission on transparency. In fact, in conspiracy with an employee of SIP, he anti-dated his letter a few months, to make it look as if the previous chair of the commission had approved. But even if that fraudulent act had not occurred, the Italian highest court notes separately, the commission didn't have the authority to demand such sensitive data anyway. The jury assigned the prize in consideration of the lack of explanations and for the silence of Fortunato on the topic.

On 13 April 2005 EDRI-member Isoc Bulgaria organised its second Big Brother Award Ceremony. This years winner in the category of most heinous political institution was the Council of Ministers, for changing the Data Protection Act. Data protection was used as an excuse to block access to personal data of public figures, including politicians.

The individual Bulgarian who most excelled in violating privacy rights was the Chief Prosecutor, for starting an investigation against the journalists who created the BBC television report 'To Win The Games', about alleged bribery for the 2012 Olympic Games city selection. Two journalists posing as businessmen talked to the Bulgarian Member of the International Olympic Committee (Ivan Slavkov) and offered him money if he'd vote for London. The 'prize' also goes to the Appeal prosecution

On 22 January 2005, the jury of the French Big Brother Awards needed no less than 7 of the famous negative Big Brother Awards to name and shame projects, people, institutions and companies for destroying privacy and promoting control. The minister of Health, Mr Douste-Blazy received a special Jury Award for promoting a new law that created the 'Dossier Medical Partagé', renamed 'Dossier Medical Personnel' (from 'shared medical record' to 'personal medical record'), that puts the entire medical records of every citizen on the internet, in order to spend less money and 'optimise' French medical care.

The Lifetime Menace Award was presented to the 3 French 'homeland security' ministers Vaillant (left wing), Sarkozy & Perben (right wing), who introduced new DNA-sampling powers, not just for sexual & violent