Annual Big Brother Award Winners Announced

SteamyMobile writes "Privacy International announced its Sixth Annual Big Brother awards today. These are awards given to the governments, business and individuals who are doing the most to bring us closer to Orwell's world of 1984. Normally this award is reserved for the British, but there are so many great candidates from other countries this year that they had to acknowledge that. So, who won, and who shall we nominate for next year? This certainly is an area with some tough competition lately."

Comments

Re:Oh, THAT Big Brother

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK, this particular award is for UK only (even when there is an entry for US for immigration fingerprints). A similar award ceremony, for US specific things, will be held in US sometime later...

Re:I'm disappointed..

[Motherfucking Shit]

Actually, it appears that I misread, this isn't an international competition, but a British award which branched out this year due to egregious offenses in other nations. But my comment about Ashcroft stands.

Speed Cameras

[fbrain]

The Department for Transport won runner-up for its electronic vehicle-identification program, currently under development. Known as the Spy in the Dashboard, the program will embed microprocessor chips into cars. The chips would automatically report any instances of speeding, illegal parking and other grievous offenses to authorities, who would follow up with a summons.

We already have cameras logging every vehicle that drives into London, cameras logging the time it take you vehicle to drive between two points and issuing a sumons, car tax cameras that issue a sumons when its out of date, GATSO camera that automaticly issue sumons, Digital GATSOs and so much more! Also in the area I live in (Bristol) the police equip old ladies with speed guns, and they take down your number plate if your speeding, you don't get a fine just a nasty letter.

Are there any things like this in the states?

BTW. Some guy got his fined nulled because they took a picture of him face on and he was in the car with his lover, this played on some european privacy law.

Re:Speed Cameras

[panurge]

Yes, there are. Despite the Constitution, data protection is weaker in the US than in Europe. Although the UK does not have a Constitution, as a member of the EU it is required to subscribe to the UN Declaration on Human Rights, which the last time I heard wasn't ratified by the US. (In fact, there is a real issue with EU law not allowing personal data to be sent to insecure countries, and I am amazed that UK corporations are allowed to outsource customer service to countries like India because of it.) IN the US, private corporations keep detailed records on you, and the US Govt. spends approx. $40 billion a year on various security agencies, though, as the Senate has recently reported, a lot of it is wasted.

This isn't a troll, just statement of fact, and I can't resist adding another fact. Years ago in the 80s, I used to work with two Englishmen who had spent a roughly equal amount of time (months)working in the US and the Soviet Union, in the Detroit auto industry and at Akademgorodok. They both insisted that there was actually more individualism and freedom in the bit of the Soviet Union they had visited than in the US. A lot less material prosperity, perhaps, but more real freedom to be an individual. I know this is heresy, but I'm just reporting. I also wonder if the climate that far East was very different from Moscow.

I found it difficult to argue with this point of view because the only country in the world where I have ever had a gun pointed at me is the US, and that by a security guard; and the only countries in the world where I have ever been fingerprinted and sniffed for drugs are the US and Mexico. (I won't get started on Mexico, except to say that every time I think of the place, the words "shit" and "hole" spring to mind.)

Re:Speed Cameras

[jimicus]

Also in the area I live in (Bristol)

I live in Bristol as well. Note that they include "illegal parking" in the list of offences.

As any Slashdot reader who's spent any length of time in Bristol (UK) will know, the local traffic wardens are vicious. I've seen people who weren't causing an obstruction towed away at 7:30AM on a Sunday. They've towed cars away while the owner was watching - even in cases where the owner was a woman with a young child. Once the wheels leave the ground, the car is towed - even if you show up to protest.

Oh yes, and they don't always check that the vehicle is actually parked illegally. There are (anecdotal) cases of legally parked cars being towed away.

And now cars will automatically report when they're illegally parked? Ouch.

Re:Speed Cameras

[AGMW]

And the latest scam from the UK government? They are talking about charging drivers by the mile, with different rates depending on where you are and at what time of day - so more expensive in congested areas.

The kicker is they are intending to use GPS in everyone's cars to see where you are. Nice little earner for the State! I wonder if they thought it'd be nice to know where everyone is first, then thought about charging for road use second!

This really deserves a Big Brother award.

Re:Suck this

[Anonymous Coward]

He's talking about the UK, where the legal drinking age is 18 everywhere, where we can indeed burn any flag we like without threat of being arrested for it, and we really can protest peacefully without being pepper sprayed or hosed down with high pressure water cannons. All things which I believe have happened within the last few years in the US.

Re:My favourites

[Veridium]

After reading this:
http://www.eurosceptic.com/sources_of_information/ articles/Elderly_couple_died_after_gas_was_cut_off .htm

It really doesn't seem fair to blame British Gas. I agree with the other posters after reading about this incident, I don't see why British Gas gets the award.

Re:U.S.-Visit?

[Sique]

To be fair, this was enacted by the Brazil justice, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. When the justice learned that brazil citizens were subject to fingerprinting and getting their image taken when entering the U.S. as tourists, he ordered that the same applies to U.S. citizens who enter Brazil as tourists. Basicly the current situation is that whatever a state demands from brazil citizens before entering, the same demands are valid for citizens of this state before entering Brazil.

Re:U.S.-Visit?

[rmerrill11]

You've never actually been to the US Mexican border have you? The US has built large walls to keep Mexicans out.
Wired: Beyond the Wall
Operation Gatekeeper

Re:U.S.-Visit?

[dcw3]

There is also the problem of the US lacking any data protection legislation.

What exactly would you call this?
http://www.usdoj.gov/foia/privstat.htm

Re:My favourites

[Anonymous Coward]

So British Gas gets an "Invasive" award for not passing personal information to the state?

No, they didn't get the award for this at all. They got the award for foolishly cutting off the gas to an elderly couple's house without taking adequate steps to warn them or their family, and then saying "But the privacy laws made us do it!".

When you are dealing with critical infrastructure such as the gas supply, you have a duty of care to ensure that nobody is harmed due to the unavailability of the service. Blaming it on those crazy privacy laws simply isn't acceptable.

Read 1984 online - in Australia.

[stienman]

Our australian friends can read Orwell's 1984 at Project Gutenberg of Australia.

Us poor sods in the USA have to wait, what, another 70 years or so? Who knows anymore. It's safer and easier to assume we can't do something than it is to assume that we can...

-Adam

Re:U.S.-Visit?

[Keebler71]

You do realise that none of the September 11th hijackers used false documents to enter the US, right? They all used their own passports issued in their own names. They would have been allowed entry under US-Visit; the only difference is that their fingerprints and mugshots would have been in a database. What use would a fingerprint have been to the authorities at 9am, September 11th, 2001?

Only partially true, try a google news search for "9-11 false passport". Their passports may have been in their names but they were still fraudulent. Try reading the complete 9-11 commission report. Specifically, page 563, note 32 claims that two of the hijackers had fraudulently manipulated their passports and that it is believed that up to 11 others did as well.

Besides, at the time, the US was not actively looking for specific terrorists trying to enter the country. Today, the US is looking for specific known terrorists who might try to enter the country. I seriously doubt that any wanted, would-be terrorist would be brazen enough to use their real passport and try to enter at an official point of entry. Much more likely, they would sneak across a border like this woman, a suspected Al-qaeda member, recently did.... but why?

Re:Automated tickets

[Blakey Rat]

The national 55 MPH speed limit was repealed ages ago. Now the speed limit is up to the individual states. Montana, which has many hundred-mile-long perfectly flat and straight freeways, has 'autobahns' in some parts of the state. Washington State has a max of 70 (60 in urban areas.) Etc.