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Big Brother Awards 2007

2007/09/23 filed under /news
Big Brother Award

Every year, the Big Brother Awards are given to persons, companies and governmental organizations that blatantly violate, ignore or disregard privacy. Of course, the name of the award is taken directly out of Orwell's 1984 (as is the image of the award itself, I assume ;-)

I, as one of the last Mohican's who value privacy over terrorism FUD safety, was pleased to see the results of the category "Persons". This year, the award went to "the Dutch citizen". The jury felt the Dutch citizens were the biggest threat to their own privacy out of disinterest and the "I've got nothing to hide" point of view.

Wholeheartedly I applaud this award for I claim for years that no one cares about privacy anymore. Only a few people see that PGP/GPG encrypted mail is useful, regardless of having something to hide. People dump their entire life on facebook, myspace or any of the other completely useless sites and people just don't seem to care (or even know about) data retention proposals and/or laws. A lot of people don't care about mandatory identification laws and the list goes on and on.

I accept the award on behalf of my uninterested countrymen. Hopefully it does make the news (besides the geeky RSS feeds ;-)

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Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (2)

Comments

Brian wrote at 2007-09-25 11:34:

Wow, I didn't even know such an award exists! I'll have to check out the full list of winners. I'm sorry your countrymen ended up on the list. I bet the USA Citizen isn't way to far behind. Your point about PGP/GPG rings home for me also. You are one of 2 others besides myself that I know who actually uses the thing.

As far as the image goes that absolutely is directly out of 1984. I believe it comes up during the torture scene of Winston Smith. His torturer (O'Brian as I recall) tells Winston that if he wants to imagine the future he should "Picture a boot stomping on a human face...forever."

I believe I'm recalling that all correctly. It's been a while since I have read it and I'm way to lazy this morning to get up from my coffee just to look it up. ;) But I'm sure you get the idea.

B10m wrote at 2007-09-25 11:38:

The list only contains Dutch people and organizations, for it's a Dutch award. I'm fairly sure there is (or should be!) a global award though ;-)

And yes, the wonderful boot stomping on a human face, forever. The eerie image that has so much truth in it, looking at the global politics that are currently in place :-S

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