In the Corporate category the Dutch railroad service (NS) were the winner. It has a dominant role in the implementation of a privacy intruding smart card for public transportation. The system will collect, keep and use personally identifiable data on all travel. The NS, the national rail monopoly, penalise those who wish to travel anonymously. The NS were present to receive the award. Five minutes later they received a warning from guest speaker Jacob Kohnstamm, chair of Dutch Data Protection Authority. He confirmed that their current privacy policy is not in line with the data protection legislation. He promised severe penalties if they introduce the system without changes to their policy on the use of personal data.
De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), the Dutch central bank, received the award for government institutions. DNB looked the other way when it was informed about the transfer of financial records to American authorities through SWIFT. Following the discovery of the central bank's knowledge, DNB defended itself by stating that the privacy of Dutch citizens is not one of its responsibilities.
The Electronic Child Dossier won in the Proposal category. The blind trust of authorities that problems will be solved by registration of personal data is shocking. To implement the Dossier, Youth and Families Minister Rouvoet plans on establishing a centralised database of all Dutch children. A file will be updated for every child until they reach the age of nineteen. and the file will be kept for another 15 years after that. The dataset is very broadly defined and will contain a wide variety of medical and psychosocial data, including all sorts of subjective opinions about children and their parents.
The Big Brother Awards put individuals, companies, government institutions and proposals that violate privacy in the spotlight. The jury announced the winners at the fifth Dutch Big Brother Awards ceremony on 21 September 2007 in De Balie in Amsterdam. The jury consisted of lawyer Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm, legal researcher and advisor Bart Schermer, Professor of Computer Security Bart Jacobs, Professor of Regulation & Technology Bert-Jaap Koops, Professor of Law & Information Science Corien Prins and author Karin Spaink (Chair). The Dutch Big Brother Awards are organised by Bits of Freedom.
