"1984" awards target Ellison, Ashcroft
By Reuters April 19, 2002, 6:30 AM PT
SAN FRANCISCO--U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and database
billionaire Larry Ellison were named this year's most notorious American
violators of personal privacy by leading advocacy groups on
Thursday.
The annual "Big Brother Awards" are presented to government,
corporations and private individuals who allegedly have done the most to
threaten personal privacy.
Privacy International, a London-based activist organization made up of
privacy experts and human rights organizations from dozens of countries,
presented the awards at the annual Computers, Freedom & Privacy
conference here this week. Several well-known U.S. privacy activists also
attended the ceremony.
The "Worst Government Official" award went to Ashcroft. Privacy
International said the top U.S. law enforcement officer is responsible
for a massive increase in wiretapping of phones and other electronics and
for the imprisonment without charge of as many as 1,200 people in the
United States after the Sept. 11 attacks on America.
The "Worst Corporate Invader" honor went to Ellison of Oracle,
the leading maker of database software, for his advocacy of a
centralized, Oracle-run government database that could be used as a
national identification system.
The honors are given out in the spirit of author George Orwell and his
warning about police surveillance in the totalitarian world of his novel
1984.
"The goal is to name and shame the bad actors," said privacy
advocate Jason Catlett, president and founder of Junkbusters of Green
Brook, N.J.
Other awards included "Most Invasive Company," "Most
Appalling Project" and "Lifetime Menace." The award is a
golden statue depicting a jackboot pressing down on a human head.
"There's not a lot of surprises here," Evan Hendricks, editor
of the Washington-based Privacy Times newsletter, said of the Big Brother
nominees.
Most recipients fail to pick up the honor in person.
The "Most Appalling Project" honor went to the Enhanced
Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening (CAPPS) project, a preflight
screening of airline passengers set up after of the Sept. 11 attacks. The
advocacy group argues this amounts to discriminatory treatment of
passengers based on race or certain consumer behaviors.
Privacy International singled out technology developers on the project,
including HNC Software, a maker of fraud detection tools; Acxiom, a
collector of business and consumer data; and Equifax, a credit
information agency.
Privacy International also hands out similar awards in eight European
countries.
"What Americans tend to forget is that what happens here in America
in terms of privacy practices and technologies is getting exported to
other countries and undermining their privacy practices," said
Stephan Endberg, a privacy consultant with Open Business Innovation,
based in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Story Copyright � 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
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-InfoWarz
"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not
interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not
wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; only power, pure
power....Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a
dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution
in order to establish the dictatorship.... If you want a picture of the
future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."
-O'Brien to Winston, George Orwell's "1984", 1949
