Czech 2010 Big Brother Awards

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Deutsch: [Big Brother Awards 2010 in Tschechien | http://www.unwatched.org/node/2362]

The sixth edition of the Czech Big Brother Awards has recently been
organised by EDRi member Iuridicum Remedium in Prague BIO eye where an
expert jury selected the winners for 2010 from more than 140 nominations.

The Czech police received the Big Brother award in the long-term
spying category, for having violated people’s privacy by “their serious and
long-term interference in people’s privacy, mainly for archiving photographs
of cars and its drivers from camera-monitoring systems,” as the organiser
explained. The police was also criticised for its overuse of applications
for access to sensitive data from mobile phones.

For the second year in a row, Facebook received the mock award as
the largest corporate spy, for pushing users to enable anybody to
have access to private data by its deceptive strategy and technical
parameters. Facebook gets the maximum information from personal profiles,
increasing their commercial potential.

The Interior Ministry was given the award in the category of the biggest
official spying, for having hindered the preparation of the legislation for
the improvement of personal data protection from camera monitoring systems,
wiretapping and DNA databases.

Even the European Union received an award, at spying among nations category,
for the negotiations in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and
for funding the INDECT project aimed at developing computer programmes to
detect “abnormal behaviour”. The project will research the use of CCTV
systems in combination with audio recordings in urban areas. For the
surveillance of citizens on the Internet, the system focuses on monitoring
forums, blogs and social networks. The end users of the system will be a
European police force.

The winner in the category of “The Big Brother’s statement” was “Facebook
father” Mark Zuckerberg for his statement that the right to privacy is
simply a social norm developing over time and that people are now satisfied
with eliminating privacy. In his opinion, “the age of privacy is over.”

ACTA got the award at the legal standard category for disregarding human
rights in favour of the industry.

The positive award for privacy protection was obtained by the citizens in
Vir nad Svratkou, South Moravia, for having stood up against the
installation of a camera monitoring system in their village.

Police receive mock award for violating privacy (11.11.2010)
http://www.praguemonitor.com/2010/11/11/police-receive-mock-award-violating-privacy

Big Brother Awards, Award for long-term spying gained Police (only in
Czech, 10.11.2010)
http://www.slidilove.cz/content/cenu-big-brother-awards-za-dlouhodobe-slideni-ziskala-policie-cr