Most Invasive Company was British Gas for, according to Privacy
International (PI), "its unfounded and cowardly claim that the Data
Protection Act was the reason why an elderly couple died after
British Gas had disconnected their gas supply."
The prize for Worst Public Servant went to the Minister for
Children, Margaret Hodge, for her promotion of the Children's Bill,
which is currently working its way through Parliament. This Bill
seeks to give each child in the UK a unique ID number and to hold
information about each child on databases to which many agencies
will have access.
The Most Appalling Project accolade went to the NHS National
Programme for IT, while the Most Heinous Government Organisation
was deemed to be The Office of National Statistics, for its Citizen
Information Project.
Unusually, the Lifetime Menace Award (now renamed the David
Blunkett Lifetime Menace Award) went to a US project – the US VISIT
Programme, which will require all visitors to the US to be
fingerprinted upon arrival.
"The scheme is offensive and invasive," reasoned PI, "and has
been undertaken with little or no debate or scrutiny." It added:
"Nor has the requirement taken any account of the 'special
relationship' between the UK and the US. The UK government has been
silent about the programme and has capitulated every step of the
way."
Home Secretary David Blunkett, the Home Office and the National
Identity Card scheme won more votes than anyone else, but were
discounted because they have won awards in previous years.
According to Simon Davies, Director of PI, "The default has
clearly shifted from privacy to surveillance. Almost all large
government projects attempt to compromise the right to privacy. The
proclaimed need for protection of children and the fight against
terrorism has often been shamelessly used as the pretext for
privacy invasion".
"We are seeing a race to the bottom where government and private
sector alike compete to provide the most intrusive services in the
most unstable environment for privacy," he added.
