Privacy International Announces Big Brother, Brandeis, and Stupid Security Awards
On April 3, 2003, Privacy International announced the winners of the 5th Annual US "Big Brother" awards to the government and private sector organizations that have done the most to invade personal privacy in the United States. The winners were: for Most Invasive Proposal, Total Information Awareness; for Greatest Corporate Invader, Delta Airlines; for Worst Public Official, Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh; and the recipient of the Admiral John M. Poindexter Lifetime Menace Award was Osama Bin Laden.
"Brandeis" awards were also given to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to the protection of privacy. This year's Brandeis recipients were Edmund Mierzwinski, U.S. PIRG Consumer Program Director; James Kasper, Representative to the North Dakota State Legislature; Charlene Nelson, a North Dakota farmer who led a successful referendum in her state to reestablish opt-in privacy rules; and Joyce Meskis, the owner of the Denver-based Tattered Cover bookstore who successfully challenged a law enforcement request for book purchaser records.
Privacy International also announced the results of its competition to find the worlds most pointless, intrusive and egregious security measures. The competition, launched in February, attracted almost 5,000 nominations from 35 countries. While the air security sector dominated the competition, nominations arose from almost all areas of private and public sector activity.
The winners were: for Most Egregiously Stupid Award, The Australian Government for a litany of pointless, irritating and self-serving security measures; for Most Inexplicably Stupid Award, Philadelphia International Airport for over-reaction to a bottle of cologne; for Most Annoyingly Stupid Award, T-Mobile (UK) for pointless and idiotic financial security measures; for Most Flagrantly Intrusive Award, Delta Terminal at JFK Airport for forcing a nursing mother to drink her own breast milk; and for Most Stupidly Counter Productive Award, San Francisco General Hospital for blind idiocy in its identity checking procedures.
US Big Brother Awards, Privacy International.
Stupid Security Awards, Privacy International.
Photographs from the Big Brother Awards, Declan McCullagh's Politechbot.com.
