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Presenting the Orwell Awards, for "Profound Disregard of Privacy" An advocacy group bestows the honor on Microsoft, the FDIC, and other names big and small The envelope please... And "the people's choice award for privacy invasion goes to...Microsoft." A London-based advocacy group called Privacy International bestowed that dubious distinction on Bill Gates & Co. at the Big Brother Awards, held Apr. 7 in Washington. The ceremony took place during the annual Computers, Freedom & Privacy conference, a gathering of policy wonks, academics, and digerati. Privacy International, whose director Simon Davies is a computer-security fellow at the London School of Economics, aims to use the awards to "name and shame" organizations that have demonstrated "profound disregard for privacy." Microsoft earned the Orwell -- a statuette of a boot stepping on a human head -- when it was revealed last month that users of Windows 98 unwittingly transmitted a unique identifier when they registered copies of the operating system. (Microsoft has since offered to fix the problem.) Other Orwells went to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. for its controversial scheme for thwarting money-laundering called Know Your Customer. Banks were supposed to closely monitor accounts and report any unusual activity to the feds. But the proposal drew such an overwhelmingly negative response, that FDIC Chairman Donna Tanoue retreated on Mar. 23, after receiving more than 250,000 E-mails, letters, and postcards. Virtually all of them said, "I don't want anyone prying into my personal financial affairs, regardless of the reason," she admitted at the time. GIANT SCREWUP. An upset of sorts was scored in the "greatest corporate invader" category. The Big Brother judges passed up Intel, even though the storm surrounding unique serial numbers in the company's Pentium III chip had privacy advocates calling for a companywide boycott. Instead, the Orwell went to a relatively unknown Massachusetts compiler of pharmacy data named Elensys, which had a contract with Giant Foods and CVS to send reminders to consumers who needed to refill prescriptions. However, consumers were alarmed that their prescription records were being shared and raised a stink that left all the parties scrambling for cover (perhaps Giant and CVS could have gotten best supporting actor awards). GOP Representative Bill McCollum of Florida (who, among other things, has supported national ID cards) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were other Big Brother "honorees." New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the Direct Marketing Assn., and Trans Union, a credit-reporting giant, were among the people and organizations that were nominated for Orwells but didn't prevail. To be sure, the Big Brother trophies are given out in tongue-and-cheek fashion -- even Microsoft executive Saul Klein got into the spirit and accepted the award on-stage. But Privacy International also seeks to recognize folks who actively work to protect privacy. In that vein, Phil Zimmermann, creator of a popular magnum-caliber encryption program called PGP (for Pretty Good Privacy), received one of two Louis Brandeis awards issued during the evening. GRASSROOTS VICTORY. In some ways, it was the other Brandeis winner, a West Virginia housewife named Diana Mey, who made the biggest impression at the ceremony. A mother of three and part-time West Liberty State College student, Mey proved that individual citizens can stand up for their privacy rights. Like so many people, Mey deeply resented the fusillade of intrusive phone calls from marketers that came just as the family sat down to dinner. In search of a remedy, she prowled the Internet and found a 1991 law called the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. It provides that if a company repeatedly calls after you ask it to stop, you can take it to small claims court. Mey asked a company called American Home Improvement Products Inc. to take a hike, but she says it kept calling anyway. So, she gathered evidence by tape-recording calls from the telemarketer, a legal practice in her state. Nonetheless, American Home Improvement objected and countersued on wiretap charges. The company said it wanted $10,000, plus punitive damages. Mey fretted that she could lose her house, but she didn't give in. "We must face the fact that we might be confronted, as I was, with the legal staff and savvy of the nation's largest law firms," she says. "But as Americans, we must stand up for our right to be left alone in our most sacred personal space, our home." In the end, it was American Home Improvement that backed down, and as part of an out-of-court settlement, Mey walked away with $4,000. Now, that's something Orwell would surely be proud of. By Edward C. Baig in Washington
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