While casually leaping on the trampoline of knowledge that is Wikipedia, I came across a few interesting nuggets – Acxiom, the company that provides a number of firms with business information, including Yelp, was a nominee for the 2005 Big Brother Award in the US. The award is intended to draw attention to alarming issues in society, particularly with regards to privacy and data security.
The “prize” is given annually to authorities, companies, organizations, and individuals that have done the most to threaten or violate people’s privacy, or that have disclosed people’s personal data to third parties.
I love the idea of holding a black tie affair for the Oscars of Infamy, or the Grammy’s of Information Security Gaffes, or the Orwell’s as they’re known in Australia, as I think these issues deserve to get a great deal more publicity, attention and debate than they currently do. Unfortunately, they do remind me slightly of the mock ad industry award the Schmios (spoofing the Clios… geddit?) – although those seemed to me to be less about drawing attention and encouraging debate about a particular issue and more about the ceremony which provides a temporary soap box for people to mouth off about the current scandal du jour.
Sadly, the Big Brother Awards seem to have missed handing out an award last year in the US (too many nominees perhaps?), but previous winners included Sony-BMG (Netherlands,2006), Accenture (US, 2005) , Brittan Elementary School(US,2005 ,for RFID tagging of students) and Philips (Germany, 2006, for ensuring that CD burners create unique signatures allowing for traceability of recordable media similar to printer codes). Let’s hope these awards don’t die out and manage to achieve a higher level of credibility and visibility in the years ahead.