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2003 Big Brother Awards
MacRonin writes "Privacy International today announced the winners of the 2003 Big Brother Awards. One of the judges, estimable Dr Ian Brown of the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR), writes: "It was alternatively amusing and depressing to be one of the judges for these awards. RIP and data retention played a large part in our deliberations..." ... Read more at The Register (UK) - 2003 Big Brother Awards: The Winners. and Political News from Wired News - Blair Tagged as Privacy Threat."
The most invasive company was Capita, a data management business that develops the software used in many of the government's data-mining schemes.
Try again next year MS!
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Free your mind.
Glad to see Stand got a 'Winston'. Long overdue.
-- And when Justice is gone, there is always... Force. --Laurie Anderson, "Oh Superman"
I don't think you fully understand, Livingston said that the Cameras were duel purpose
1: the traffic thing, fair enough I say, more people should work from home.
2: the we will use face recognition and catch everyone and anyone(evil nasty terrorists) in our security ring.
That's an breach of privacy and trust.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
It's only in the second paragraph. C'mon, surely even Slashdotters can read that far.
This isn't really about enforcing traffic laws by video - it's about the inner London congestion charging.
...Of course, having said that it's not really practical for the Transport For London crew to actually throw that data away... that wouldn't make sense unless they were actively trying to promote individual privacy. Which they aren't. Hence the award.
I fully agree that snapping speeders is an excellent idea. If you're doing 120 mph in a 70 zone, then you should be photographed, and ticketed.
What PI are talking about is the fact that every driver who enters central London is photographed. While this is ostensibly in order to catch offenders who haven't paid their (£5) congestion charge for that day, the result is that the time and location of their entry into London is stashed in a database, regardless of whether they paid or not.
The government currently say they won't use that information for anything, but it seems to me that having such a superb source of tracking info available is going to mean that this database gets requested by the police and/or defendants in all manner of cases to prove where people were at particular times.
Welcome to the start of the Big Brother age in Britain.
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Which London already has of course. You need to buy parking permits for most councils in london, and there are extremely large fines (normally £80) if you park in a space without one, or without paying about £2 per hour. That didn't stop congestion, and the money (about £140 million a year if I recall) raised went to individual councils rather than being spent on public transport.