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30 10 2000 WORLD-INFO FLASH
Big Brother Award 2000 Austria
by World-Information.Org



++ Surveillance has Many Faces, We Name Them ++ Links ++

As high speed communication networks spread over the globe, the private sphere of the individual is - for the sake of investigation and marketing, criminal justice and statistics - reduced to a precarious existence. Surveillance, operating discretely in the background, has become a common feature of the information society, which appears to be striving towards a complete social and commercial control of each individual.

To raise awareness, each year a growing number of digital human rights organizations present the Big Brother Award to Government agencies and private companies, who have done their best to invade the Austrian citizens privacy. This year´s Award has been presented by ARGE DATEN, Chello Usergroup, Public Netbase - Institute for New Culture Technologies, Quintessenz and VIBE!AT

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++ 26/10/2000 The Austrian Big Brother Award 2000 Ceremony took place at Vienna´s most famous night- club, the Flex, ++ Here are the winners in the five categories of the Big Brother Award 2000 Austria, and why they have been chosen by the jury ++

Business/Finances - Saturn - When paying with the EC-Card at the multimedia store “Saturn”, customers unsuspectingly and irrevocably approve of their personal data ”being forwarded”.

Politics: - AUF - The Austrian police union affiliated to the FPOE “AUF” deliberately misappropriated data from the Department of the Interior to intimidate political opponents.

Authorities and Administration - Helmi - 'Helmi' is the nickname for the anonymous Austrian trial witnesses, who, disguised with a helmet or facemask, have repeatedly appeared before the Austrian court. Based on nothing but “Helmi´s” statements, one person has already been sentenced to 1,5 year of prison. ”Helmi” will be a case for the European Court for human rights.

Communication - Austrian Siemens PSG - In the SEC Lawfull Interception LI Team of the European Telecom Standards Institute [ETSI] technicians from the Austrian Siemens Branch PSE und other international telecommunication companies work together with Police and Secret service contacts to specify the technical infrastructure and the interception interfaces of all future digital telephone nodes in Europe.

Lifetime Achievement - Dieter Boehmdorfer - Austrian Minister of Justice. He used to be the legal adviser of the FPOe. In his position as the lawyer of the FPOe, he filed numerous cases against journalists and other critics of the FPOe. In some instances he evidently made use of confidential sources of the Austrian police database.

And at last the Public Award went to the - FPOe - for known and well documented reasons.

In spite of the polite invitations by the organizers, none of the proud and deserving winners appeared in person at the award ceremony. Instead, the Big Brother Awards were given to trustworthy representatives, to be handed to the winners at another occasion. But the story took a different turn:

Later that evening the Big Brother Awards, six metallic robot dogs, were drowned in the nearby river by the cheering audience.

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List of the nominees, who didn´t receive an award: amazon.AT/American Express/SkiData AG/SPOe-Graz/ Minister of Interier Ernst Strasser/Peter Westenthaler and Andreas Kohl/Austrian Justice Authorities/ the Masked Police Officers/Johann Szilvassy/Chello/ jet2web/A1, max, ONE, tele.ring/Neue Kronen-Zeitung/ Michael Sika/ Austrian Military Intelligence Office

We wish them good luck for the next year´s Big Brother Award Round-Up.

Complete documentation of all the nominees and winners at

>>> http://www.bigbrotherawards.at/

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++LINKS++

Privacy International
>>> http://www.privacyinternational.org/

Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)
>>> http://www.epic.org

The Computers Freedom & Privacy Conference
>>> http://www.cfp.org/

Center for Democracy and Technology
>>> http://www.cdt.org/

Preserving Privacy in the Information Society by Marc Rotenberg
>>> http://www.unesco.org/webworld/infoethics_2/eng/papers/paper_10.htm









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