Nominations Swiss Big Brother Awards

By EDRi · October 6, 2004

The organising committee of the Swiss Big Brother Awards today presented a selection of candidates for the Big Brother Award. A jury of 13 well known individuals will choose the winners out of this selection.

Half of the 52 public nominations were sent in for the ‘State’ category, including several police departments, the district council and the national assembly. The police of Graubunden was nominated for collecting and sharing data of at least 1.000 demonstrators during the World Economic Forum in Davos, and the police of St. Gallen and Zurich were nominated together for unlawfully collecting genetical data. A very original nomination was sent in for the Bern municipal council, for monitoring all the bicycle parking lots in the innercity.

In the ‘business category’ many public transport companies were nominated for video surveillance. The supermarket chain Migros was nominated for experimenting with RFIDs on individual products, while the national alliance of medical insurance companies risks getting a Big Brother Award for inventing a new tariff-system that displays extensive, very privacy-sensitive diagnostic information on doctors’ bills.

Besides the category ‘lifetime achievements’ and the positive ‘Winkelried Award’, the Swiss BBA introduce the new category ‘workplace’. In this section a regional public transport firm is mentioned for taking alcohol tests, and several supermarket chains for asking very inappropriate questions on job application forms.

The awards ceremony takes place on Saturday evening 16 October, in Emmenbrucke, near Luzern. Before the ceremony, there will be a camera surveillance walk in Luzern, followed by an international symposium on filtering, datamining and surveillance. From 15 to 17 October Pulp is organising many performances and events in the Hal where the ceremony takes place.

Nominations and ceremony Swiss Big Brother Awards
http://www.bigbrotherawards.ch/2004/event/

International conference, performances and installations
http://www.pulpnet.ch/