Fri, 12 Dec 2008

The Big Brother awards are back

After a four-year absence, the Big Borther awards are back with Simon Davies and Gus Hosein from Privacy International as masters of ceremony. Traditionally this event expose the government and private sector organisations which have done the most to threaten personal privacy. This year the emphasis was much more on celebrating the individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the protection of privacy.

A single Big Brother 2008 award - the golden statue of a boot stamping upon a human head - was won by New Labour.

Six individuals received virtual Winstons (due to timing there were no physical objects to give during the evening, which also meant as Simon pointed out that there was nothing to be seized by the Police in case of raids on any of the winners!):

• Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP, Liberal Democrat European justice and human rights spokeswoman recently led a successful campaign to set the minimum age for fingerprinting for visas and passports in Europe to 12-year old rather than 6 as many governments wanted.
• Phil Booth, National Coordinator of NO2ID, the UK-wide, non-partisan single-issue group focussed on the threat to liberty and privacy posed by the rapid growth of the database state. Phil thanked the No2ID pioneers Guy Herbert, general secretary of No2ID and Chris Lightfoot whose untimely death was a loss for the UK political arena and IT community.
• Helen Wallace, Executive Director of GeneWatch UK, a not-for-profit policy research and public interest group investigating how genetic science and technologies impact our food, health, agriculture, environment and society. GeneWatch UK provided expert evidence on behalf of S. and Marper to the European Court of Human Rights. The Court decided that the retention of S. and Marper's DNA breaches human rights law.
• Gareth Crossman, retiring Director of Policy at Liberty.
• Becky Hogge - retiring Executive Director of the Open Rights Group.
• David Davis MP, the fomer Conservative Shadow Home Secretary who resigned from Parliament to provoke a wider debate about the erosion of civil liberties, and was re-elected on this agenda.

Most of the short presentations were about the hope brought about by the recent ECtHR ruling in S. & Marper v. UK (GeneWatch UK, Privacy International and Liberty intervened with evidence or submission in this case.) The derailment of the attempt to extend pre-charge detention to 42 days, and the absence of the latest communication surveillance initiative, the interception modernisation programme (IMP), from the Queen's speech were others positive news this year.

Congratulations to Baroness Ludford, Phil, Helen, Gareth, Becky and David Davis.

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