Ministry of Justice wins Big Brother oeuvre prize for privacy violations

Bits of Freedom has awarded the Big Brother Award Expert Prize of 2021 to the Ministry of Justice and Security, partly for ethnic profiling based on algorithms. Outgoing minister Hugo de Jonge wins the audience award.

The Ministry of Justice and Security receives the Big Brother Award Expert Prize as an oeuvre prize for five reasons, Bits of Freedom reports. In addition to ethnic profiling based on algorithms, the organization mentions following citizens on social media without authorization by the National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism.

The ministry also wins because of the large-scale deployment of facial recognition technology by the police and because of several experiments with poor communication: “Citizens often do not know what technology is in public space, what data is collected about them, for what purpose, by who, what happens to it, etc.” Finally, the privacy organization mentions that the Minister for Legal Protection is limited to a supporting role.

The audience award goes to the outgoing Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport, Hugo de Jonge. The reason is the introduction of corona tickets. According to BoF, it is not well substantiated why this introduction is necessary and there are no guarantees. The Felipe Rodriguez Award for Privacy Advocates goes to human rights lawyer Nani Jansen Reventlow, founder of Digital Freedom Fund.