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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."
But I'd like to thank my parents, George W. Bush, that Senator that beat me after he died, Bob Jones University, Muslims all over the world, and of course God, for making this possible!
John Ashcroft
Here is the website for The 2004 UK Big Brother Awards, for those of you who want to skip over that puny Register article. My thoughts on this subject is that it's a great idea to shine a huge spotlight on those who would infringe upon privacy, to give them a taste of their own medicine. Of course I don't condone tapping their phones, blackmailing the execs or sending boxes of poo to their doors (like on Six Feet Under's recent arc). This award show will do just fine, in an almost biblical manner of sinning the sinner.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I'm sure MS will be on that list. They managed to get an OS on my computer that I didn't want.
404
Where is the US equivilent ????
The judges are simply spoilt for choice here. It would cost a fortune to manufacture the number of awards needed...
Web Sig: Eddy Currents
"If you are interested in attending the awards you need to register at UKBBA@privacy.org"
:)
I wonder if you have to give them your real name.
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.
News Article Title: Big Brother Awards for Privacy Invaders
What's wrong with this title, people?
"Hello, Big Brother? I'd like to report YOU! Oh, hang on, there's somebody at my door."
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
David Blunkett. British politician, now in charge of Homeland Security for the U.K. I'm sure that in spirit it would be translated to the "John Ashcroft Lifetime Award" for U.Sians, but the position Blunkett holds is probably more akin to Tom Ridge's.
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!
The bank insists "that customers report to a branch with documents to prove their identities".
The article does not explain under what circumstances the bank requires this, perhaps to open an account.
So why is this invasive? Would the judges rather have the bank naively believe anything a potential con-artist tells them over the phone?
In this age of identity theft, this might be a bank to consider. Apparently, they take a persons true identity seriously.
Contenders for Worst Public Servant are Margaret Hodge for her support for a database of children and "good behaviour" orders for children as young as eight.
So, how come Santa Claus is not on the shortlist? Let's put that #1 record keeper in the world on a list for a change. Let's see how he likes the taste of his own medicine!
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
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.
Anyone notice that you have to register in order to attend the event? Other than filling the organization's mailing list, what's the legitimate purpose for making privacy advocates identify themselves?
I think they should take a look in the mirror.
As someone who has been attacked viciously in the UK under the gaze of CCTV, and the CCTV footage being instrumental in getting the offenders locked up, I can't say I mind CCTV.
What I'd mind is if it was used proactively, e.g., for tracking people without their knowledge using face recognition systems. I believe a person has the right to go about their day without being tracked and logged in databases "Citizen #45932842 logged at Market Square 8:23:23" and so on.
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.
If by "your every move" you mean "your every move in busy urban areas" you'd be half-right. This is, of course, nothing like 1984.
There is overwhelming public support for cameras in city centres. As a nation of Crimewatch viewers, Brits see cameras (rightly) as aiding their safety rather than as an evil gummit mind-control scheme.
Seriously, there's nothing like misplaced ideology to mess up a country's administration. An absolute right to privacy in public is every bit as bad for the general public as the police state is.
- Chris
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
It's a question of scale. Yes, a police officer could have investigated you a century ago by following you through public streets. Would you be comfortable with a separate police officer assigned to every citizen, following you every day from the moment you leave your home?
That's the scale we're talking about now; there is no similar limitation of policing resources, so everyone who passes within the cameras' view is monitored -- for whatever purpose those with camera record access decide.
Now, come on... Britain in 1984 was not only a privacy-free surveillance state, it was completely cut off from the rest of Europe and locked into a destructive alliance with the United States. You're exaggerating things enormously here.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
No, 1984 would require surveilance in the privacy of your own home, tracking your sexual habits, hobbies, et cetera. Keeping track of everywhere you go, your political opinions, and taking action against you for them. It will be 1984 when your television records YOU.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
France have had personal ID cards for years and really, I don't see where it is a privacy problem.
Moreover, it proved so much useful (sic!) that it is no longer mandatory and is now replaced by the use of passeports, which are not mandatory to have, unless you want to travel outside the country.
In North-America, people use your driving license as an ID card. So can somebody explain why having ID cards is a problem in the first place, whatever kind of ID it is?
Can anyone in the US what's the big deal with a national ID card? In this part of the world and in many other countries there are national ID cards and nobody cares. I understand you use your SSN and driver's license for what we use the ID card. So what could be the problem in having one?
Not trolling, I always wanted to understand your point of view about this.
My website
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!
Open Source Sushi
The link in the description is only an article at the register.com. The actual website for the US awards can be found here and links for big brother awards for other nations can be found here.
Beware blue cats moving at
... doesnt it make sense to put the camera there?
Exactly. It only becomes evil if they take it one step further out, i.e., they identify a nice, long, straight, wide section of road, purposedly set a low speed limit fully knowing people aren't going to respect it, and then add automatic surveillance.
sigs are hazardous to your health
The alternative is to not have mod points and although most people don't agree with the odd moderation, they are a great way to filter out the idiots.
Get paid to search..It's geniune and
"They [CCTV cameras] hardly track my every move - they're primarily used after the fact to identify people or to follow people attempting to evade the police."
To identify thieves, and then completely ignore them, in the usual manner of UK police. (yes I've got clear CCTV footage of a theft including peoples' faces, no nothing was ever investigated)
And no, they don't track your every move unless you happen to be interesting|drunken|funny enough that they'll film you and show it on national television for a laugh! Turn to ITV any weekday evening for yet more CCTV footage of people you know walking down the street.
And letting big brother monitor everything you do in return for good programming
That doesn't remotely make sense. And besides, big brother is a Channel 4 programme - they don't get any of the TV liscence money.
My understanding was that a TV *does* emit radio waves, and that they can and do track them. They also do it the easy way - look for TV sales, look for houses with no TV (in this day and age???) and hassle them (I had no TV for a few years and got a good few "reminders"). When they think they can make money at it - they DO get the detector vans out though. Student flats - hand held detector wandering from floor to floor (Students are very poor at getting licences, but most have a TV). S.
If you pick your jaw up off the floor and keep reading through the tears, a bit further down it says:
That probably doesn't qualify for your list of evil-doers, but it almost made me lose my lunch.
You are overrating some parts of anglosaxon law system.
.
The basis of UK law is that everything is permitted unless specifically prohibited (reverse is true in many countries)
This was even truth in comunistic countries. I agree that this was (probably) inventeted in UK as a rule, but it is common thing in most of the even semicivilized (read: dictatorship countries) world
UK invented many of things in legal systems that we take for granted, but you should be aware that nothing lasts forever! For instance, UK legal system does not allow you to go to second instance court in many cases - which is, from continental point of view, serious abuse of human rights (IIRC, if you are trialed by jurry, you can't complain to their decision; they allowed this recently, but only in some extremely rare cases).
Not to mention last report of Lord Hutton (if I had luck to spell its name correctly). In most of the world, ad-hoc parlamentarian comitee would investigate that, not prime minister's favorite judge. Ok, I am sounding like flaimbaiter, but these examples clearly show why we (including Britons, no matter of their past achievements) need more organisations like Privacy International.
No sig today.
Yeah, I know he's blind and good for him to get to the position he's got, but it doesn't change the fact that he's an authoritarian socialist statist who's ideal society seems to be based upon the Soviet system but with more technology.
He deserves a special prize for his efforts to increase state control and reduce individual liberty and privacy.
But nobody seems to realize it's a slippery slope, or at least nobody is talking about it. Governments, by their very nature, become more powerful and subsume the rights of individual citizens. Did it occur to you that your government decided they wanted mandatory national ID cards with biometric data after everyone so easily rolled over on the issue of nearly constant surveilance?
An equilibrium will be established between people's demand for individual rights and people's acquiescence of those rights under the (usually mistaken) belief that they will be more secure. The UK citizens have given up more rights than US citizens, but we're on the same path. The US Supreme Court recently decided that citizens can be required to identify themselves when asked by police officers, which reminds me of old movies with Nazis demanding, "Your papers please." Cameras are an increasing part of everyday life in the US. Not so much at the government level, although many urban intersections have cameras spying on us, nominally under the guise of traffic enforcement. But many businesses large and small are installing cameras that not only record images from the business property, but also in the public and private areas in the vicinity.
I value my privacy, and I resent the invasion of it. I DO have some expectation that I can walk down the street without my every move being recorded. And yes, I'm willing to surrender some degree of security, either real or imagined, for that modicum of privacy. I do NOT believe the government has the right to spy on me, simply because I'm not doing anything wrong. Universal surveilance seems to be based on the presumption of guilt. Why else would the government watch everybody, unless it's to catch the citizens whom it presumes to be guilty?
Crime has many complex social causes. It cannot be cured by restricting people's rights. At every point, the goverment assures the citizens, "If you just give up one more right, we'll make you safe." As soon as the citizens accept the loss of that right, there is the government asking for another. "If everyone would carry national ID cards with biometric data.... If only we had a national DNA database.... If only all citizens took government supplied mind control drugs...."
If fear of a criminal element is the lever used by government to obtain power from the people, why would anyone think the government will ultimately be successful in reducing crime? In the US, crime rates are highest in the areas where rights are restricted the most. Whether crime or the loss of rights came first is a subject of intense debate, but the correlation between crime and the loss of individual rights is not seriously debated by anyone. I think in most cases, a breakdown in the social fabric resulted in crime, then the government used people's fear of crime to restrict citizen's rights. But the loss of rights has certainly not resulted in lower crime rates. In many cases, the loss of some rights have resulted in a documented and obvious INCREASE in crime.
You want less crime? Invest in education and a fair and prosperous economy, then wait a generation. Short term fixes like registering citizens, heavy surveilance, and the general loss of rights are not the answer.
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
For instance, UK legal system does not allow you to go to second instance court in many cases - which is, from continental point of view, serious abuse of human rights (IIRC, if you are trialed by jurry, you can't complain to their decision; they allowed this recently, but only in some extremely rare cases).
Er, well, whilst it is true that in the UK you cannot appeal on a question of fact (ie you cannot appeal the jury's decision on guilt or innocence) you can certainly appeal on a question of law. So your point is somewhat wrong.
But to make the comparison with "Continental" jurisprudence is spurious at best. It is critical to remember that in the Common law tradition it is up to the state to prove guilt and that the defendant is innocent until such proof beyond reasonable doubt is offered, and then accepted by the jury of 12 of the defendants peers. Such a presumption of innocence does not exist in the Roman/Napoleonic model from which the vast majority of the continental jurisdictions derive their criminal justice. This "golden thread" of British justice (Thank you Rumpole) and he role of the jury is at the heart of the difference.
However back to the original posters point. The constitution of the UK (and there is one, its just not written down) is founded on the idea that all things are permitted unless prescribed otherwise by law. The codified rights and duties of the continental criminal codes do not present the same ideals of freedom as this. Indeed I would suggest that the simple fact that the grandparent post actualy asked the question about "what is so wrong with having to have an ID card" says more about the fundamental differences about continental Europe and the UK than any subsequent post.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."