With the Big Brother Award every year people, companies, government institutions and proposals are put in the spotlight for promoting privacy violations.Today, during the Dutch awards ceremony in De Melkweg in Amsterdam, Dutch minister for Integration and Immigration Rita Verdonk has won the Big Brother Award.
Minister Verdonk is awarded the price because she handed-over the status of asylum seeker of rejected applicants to their country of origin, denied it repeatedly in parliament and later minimised the impact of this information. Though much media attention was devoted to the credibility of the minister, the gravity of the privacy violation remained underexposed, according to the jury. The information about their attempt to seek asylum might very well cause life threatening situations for the applicants in their country of origin. Thus the case provides a perfect illustration how important privacy is for the security of people.
Sony BMG has won the award in the category Companies for the rootkit scandal. In the category government institutions, the Flevo hospital earned an award with very poor security of personal data about patients. In the category 'proposals', the government was crowned fot its idea to put a central database into place with biometric data.
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