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Big Brother Awards for Privacy Invaders
Dozix007 writes "The Register reports that the shortlist for this year's Big Brother awards for nasty privacy invaders has been released. The awards include: Worst Public Servant, Most Invasive Company, Most Appalling Project, Most Heinous Government Organisation and Lifetime Menace Award - now renamed the David Blunkett Lifetime Menace Award. Pressure group Privacy International, which organises the awards, said it was overwhelmed by nominations for Blunkett, the Home Office and national ID cards but they had been recognised in previous years."
Where is the US equivilent ????
I had never heard of this list however the more publicity it sees the more awareness it raises. It is very interesting and I am not currently using any products from any of the mentioned companies and will now know to avoid them in the future. If more lists like this were in the popular media, companies would be at least held a little more accountable for there actions by those customers who care about such issues and do not have the time to gather the information about them elsewhere.
I'd like to see an annual list of organizations, companies, banks, utilities that sell your address and phone numer to marketers. I expect if I sign up for a "club card" at Safeway or some other retailer, that my info is potentially up for grabs, but when I signed up with Sierra Club, my junk mail exponentially grew, and I OPTED OUT!! of the sharing info option. I think they probably kill more trees than they save. I've received 3 renewal notices from them since February of this year, and my membership expires in August!
They hardly track my every move - they're primarily used after the fact to identify people or to follow people attempting to evade the police.
They're all in public places, I have no expectation of privacy in a public place and I'm not committing any offences, it really doesn't bother me.
The nation ID card, OTOH, is a minor problem for the government - at last count almost 80% of population were against them and 30% said that they would go to prison rather than carry the card (Numbers subject to statistics).
Did you check the option to opt-out of the list of opt-out people? Did you check the list to mark your information as inherited opt-out? You know, if you give your info to the marketing division, they might share it with the collections division, who might share it with the membership division, and somewhere along the line the "private" bit on your data didn't line up in the database, and someone in the corporate affairs insurance services division closes a deal on 50,000 new leads. :)
I've always been suspicious of that opt-out crap, too. Like all the spam mail that says "click here to be (re)moved from the list". Removed from one list, added to another.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Never give a charity with no purpose your address.
I once gave my address to The March of Dimes Foundation, but that was a mistake.
At present, the only charity with my current address is the local NPR affiliate, and they haven't abused it to my knowledge.
Slashdot is my Mercer Box.
Dude, you have to pay a television tax. People go around with antennaes in hand and vans to observe what households have televisions running and whether or not they've paid their television tax. ...in exchange for which they get television which (hold on to your hat here) **doesn't suck**.
No. They don't have vans and shit, that is just scare tactics.
What they do is monitor who buys TVs, and if someone buys a new TV that doesn't have a TV license, they pay them a visit. I know I had to give my name and address when I bought my TV and that was for TV licensing purposes (it isn't a tax, more like a mandatory TV subscription, the price isn't that bad now with several channels and radio stations, as well as the website and interactive stuff being paid by the fee, but 10 years ago the BBC was really badly managed financially).
For that, we get advert-free television that is meant to be politically unbiased. It doesn't have any pressures from advertisers at least. OTOH it sucks when you want to have a piss and there are no ad breaks.
The cameras aren't observing *me*. Yet. And they are only in city centres and shopping centres for the main part.
There was a pretty interesting bit on the BBC ("car wars" i think) that showed how london police cars are fitted with cameras that automatically scan car registrations and will notify the PC if it spots a vehicle with either outstanding tickets or no insurance. Despite some false positives, it seemed to work pretty well.
CCTV raised a lot of concerns when it was first rolled out, but now that it's here people seem to have accepted it - even more, people seem to appreciate it given the added sense of security and the positive effect on violent crime rates. Still, before we all get all warm and cuddly, we should remember that, at the end of the day, it's a system for surveillance of the general public. Just because the people jogging the joystick today aren't abusing it (it even caught that shocking bit of police brutality in Manchester a while back) doesn't mean the next bunch won't.
#!/usr/bin/english
and let me take the opportunity to thank all of you Britons for pay this fee to keep the BBC around. As an American, I trust the BBC news more than any organization; especially for news about American.
Also I love fun comedies like The Office. Jolly good show!
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