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.