Plasterk and National Police win Big Brother Awards

Bits of Freedom presented the awards for the biggest privacy violators of the year. The Chief of Police of the National Police wins the expert prize, Minister Plasterk has been declared the winner by the public. A positive prize was also awarded, which went to Max Schrems.

The experts ‘reward’ the Chief of Police with a Big Brother Award because the National Police is committed to predictive policing. That is the use of data or big data to predict criminal behavior and possibly intervene before a criminal offense has been committed. “If a citizen deviates from the norm, he is suspected and is [hij] a citizen at risk”, argues criminologist Marc Schuilenburg. A leaked document would show that the police are working on a nationwide network of sensors to ‘predict events in the near future’. The expert jury includes scientists, columnists, activists and people from the business.

Minister Ronald Plasterk is the winner of the audience award. He was nominated because he “works on a wiretapping law, but refuses to listen himself.” His proposal for a new Intelligence and Security Services Act was widely criticized. He also owed his nomination to the fact that his substantiation of the necessity of the law is considered to be seriously below par. For example, it is not clear on which research the bill is based. The public indicated that they were very disappointed in the way in which the minister dealt with the critical reactions to the draft bill. Plasterk did say “some changes are being made in parts”, but according to concerned citizens, journalists and human rights organizations, he does not take the criticism to heart.

Plasterk was also nominated for the expert prize, as was the Van der Valk hotel Hengelo. That received the nomination for voluntarily and structurally handing over his guest list to the police. The other nominees for the audience award were Achmea, ‘which trades solidarity for big data’ and Microsoft, ‘which, with Windows 10, immediately caught up with its privacy-violating disadvantage compared to Google and Facebook’.

This year, Bits of Freedom also presented a positive award: the Felipe Rodriquez Award. The winner of this prize is Austrian law student Max Schrems. His lawsuit caused the Safe Harbor agreement to be swept off the table. Schrems is also involved in a legal battle with Facebook. He accuses the social network of large-scale privacy violations because of its participation in the NSA’s Prism eavesdropping program. The positive award is named after the co-founder of Xs4all, who passed away in early October. During his life, he devoted himself in many ways to protecting privacy and preserving information freedom.