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2019

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Big Brother Awards
Gergana Jouleva, PhD - Executive Director of AIP; Georgi Lozanov - Media expert, Ass. Professor at the Journalism Department at the Sofia University; Alexander Kashumov - Attorney-at-law, Head of AIP legal team; Stephan Anguelov – Attorney-at-law, AIP


Access to Information Programme (AIP) and Internet Society Bulgaria held the Big Brother Anti-awards ceremony in Bulgaria for the seventh consecutive times on January 28, 2019, at the Literary Club "Peroto" in the National Palace of Culture. The anti-awards are given to government institutions, private companies or individuals, who have done the most to invade personal privacy.
 
The anti-awards are given to government institutions, private companies, or individuals, who have done the most to invade personal privacy. The Big Brother Award was founded by Privacy International – a human rights group working for the protection of privacy. Privacy International maintains the Big Brother Awards international website. The name of the award is inspired by the famous anti-utopian novel by George Orwell. The phrase "Big Brother is watching you" refers to invasive surveillance, limiting the personal freedom.
 
"The aim of the anti-awards is first and foremost to inform citizens about their rights and to remind them to watch over their own rights. The second objective is to alert institutions and the big companies and institutions working with personal data so that they take the necessary care and safeguard the boundary of individual freedoms'', explained Alexander Kashumov, head of the AIP Legal Team and a member of the Anti-Awards Jury since 2003.
 
"Since 2008, the handing of the anti-awards in Bulgaria is realted to another important event - January 28, the international Data Protection Day. The date marks the adoption of the oldest international document, Convention No. 108 on the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data, adopted by the Council of Europe in 1981", said Kashumov.
 
He outlined the main changes in recent years that have posed challenges to personal data protection - the development of technology, especially the Internet, social networks, search engines, and events such as the revelations of Edward Snowden, the US election data scandal, and Cambridge Analytica events, the ruling of the European Court of Justice in the case against Google Spain and the justification for the right to be forgotten, the entry into force of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018.
 
Within the campaign launched by the AIP and the Internet Society-Bulgaria at the beginning of the year, anyone could submit a proposal for a private organization or state institution, which by its actions violated personal data protection and the privacy of citizens. Nominations were done through the electronic form of the campaign page: http://bigbrotherawards.bg/. Within the deadline announced, a large number of nominations were received. The jury found only some of them admissible. And only two - showing specific practices for breaches of personal data protection and privacy.
 
 
The members of the jury who selected the recipients of the 2019 Big Brother Anti-awards are:
  • Alexander Kashumov - Attorney-at-law, Head of AIP legal team
  • Georgi Kirov - Board of Directors member at the Internet Society-Bulgaria
  • Georgi Lozanov - Media expert, Ass. Professor at the Journalism Department at the Sofia University
  • Gergana Jouleva, PhD - Executive Director of AIP
  • Dimitar Ganchev – Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors at the Internet Society-Bulgaria
  • Ilya Valkov - Journalist (ClubZ news website)
  • Irina Alexova - Attorney-at-law, Internet Society-Bulgaria
  • Krassimir Dimitrov - Associate Professor in law, former member of the Commission for Personal Data Protection
  • Stephan Anguelov – Attorney-at-law, AIP
  • Fany Davidova - Lawyer, Personal Data Protection expert


Stephan Anguelov presented the nominations in the Private Organization category. These were: the "Municipal Forest" Municipal Company - Elin Pelin - for the publication of minutes of competitions containing personal data of the participants; Pedagogical Specialists Training Center Ltd. - for leakage of more than 9400 data of former and current students from the Vocational High School of Economics in Sliven; Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski” - for publishing the data of dormitories student candidates; private bailiffs - for having published personal data in public sales announcements; First multidisciplinary hospital for active treatment "Trimontium"-Plovdiv - for the supposed use of personal data of a patient who has not been hospitalized for years.
 
"The award in this category goes to the Pedagogical Specialists Training Center Ltd. for the serious leakage. The list with personal information was also published on one of the many well-known social networks. It remains unclear how many people have been able to see them. The case was uncovered and described by the journalist Ilya Valkov, a member of the jury", announced Anguelov.
 
Despite the invitations sent, there was no company representatives to pick up the statuette. 
 
Assoc. Prof. Georgi Lozanov presented the nominations in the category of state institution. "Personal privacy is the most violated human right - a right that one takes away from oneself and even trades with it. It is becoming more and more difficult to hand these awards, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to for us, the jury, to take the decision on who this anti-honor should fall on. It is difficult to raise awareness on the sensitivity needed in order to protect something that is anyway beeing violated on voluntary basis. However, the entry into force of the EU's GDPR Regulation, the AIP's activity, the long-standing practice of the Commission for the protection of personal data, shows some sensitivity has been achieved", Georgi Lozanov said.
 
The anti-award in this category was awarded to the National Assembly for violating the balance between freedom of expression and protection of personal data by introducing into the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) on January 24, 2019, amendments containing 10 criteria by which it will be judged whether a certain piece of information has been published for journalistic purposes, criteria wich were concieved to "assess" journalistic expression. Later on in 2019, these amendments were declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court. 
 
"The criteria themselves are good. They really help to protect personal data and are in the direction of this growing sensitivity. The point is that they can have a side effect. They can violate another right - the right to freedom of expression. They can become prescriptions for the exercise of the journalistic profession. This means de facto censorship. So, the anti-award is given because there was no risk foreseen that these criteria would become a threat to freedom of expression", explained Prof. Lozanov.
 
Nominated in the category were also the State Agency for National Security, the Registry Agency, the Municipality of Lovech, the Prosecutor General's Office, the CCommission for Combating Corruption and the Withdrawal of Illegally Acquired Property. 
 
The 2019 Big Brother ceremony was made possible with the help of the Renewable Freedom Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation.