It’s an award German companies hope they don’t win. The annual "Big Brother Award," which will be given out for the tenth time on Friday, is given to companies which have engaged in abusive uses of personal information or have been careless in ensuring the security of consumer data.

"The Big Brother awards are a great success story," said Rena Tangens, one of the founding members of FoeBuD, the data protection group which sponsors the event. "The award is widely known with companies and they do fear it because it garners a lot of publicity. There is now a large movement growing on data protection.”

German public's data open to exploitation

The latest in a string of data protection scandals in Germany occurred just this week. Deutsche Telekom's image was dealt a serious blow this week after a German news website reported that data records from thousands of customers, including bank account information, ended up in the hands of call center employees in Turkey. Deutsche Telekom revealed that four of their external partners had illegally passed customer data, but stressed it had fined these companies and ended the partnerships.

Another Deutsche Telekom data security lapse occurred in 2008. The telecommunications giant admitted that the private details, including names, addresses and phone numbers, of roughly 17 million customers, which comprised about half of their consumer base, had been stolen in 2006.

In addition, widespread shock and concern erupted in the Northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein in 2008, when its consumer protection agency was anonymously sent a CD-ROM containing the personal details of 17,000 people, including bank account information.

These data scandals highlighted the gravity of the data protection issue in Germany and widely set off calls for more stringent laws by a public which no longer felt secure.

Data protection reforms

On the July 3rd, 2009, the German Federal Parliament passed comprehensive data protection reforms. The Federal Data Protection Act entered into force as of September 1st.

Under the revised law, personal data cannot be used for marketing purposes unless the individual has expressly con­sented to such use.

Encryption tools have also been made compulsory for safeguarding data transmission. Furthermore, data controllers now have to notify the proper authorities if there is a security breach.

The new laws also include harsher penalties for companies who fail to comply, imposing fines ranging from €50,000 to €300,000.

Nonetheless, some data protection experts insist these reforms don't hit the mark. Tangens of FoeBuD says big corporations lobbied hard to water down the reforms.

"The new reforms are a good example of what the lobbying of big companies can accomplish," said Tangens. "The old laws have only been remade and it's a bad patchwork. It's very distorted and I'm very negative about it.”

Tangens said she'd like to see Germany pass an entirely new law on data protection.


Author: Faith Thomas
Editor: Trinity Hartman