Big Brother Awards 2026: negative prizes for the Digital Omnibus and the tax ID

Digitalcourage handed out the Big Brother Awards 2026 in Bielefeld on Friday, 25 September 2026. It was the 26th time. The prize goes to players who, in the judgement of a five-member jury, interfere particularly heavily with informational self-determination. heise online and netzpolitik.org reported on the ceremony.

EU Commission: Digital Omnibus

In the EU and Europe category, the European Commission took the award. The criticism centres on the so-called Digital Omnibus. Its proposals for deregulating the European data economy have been debated controversially for months. A redefinition of the term "personal data" could mean that IP addresses and tracking cookies no longer count as personal data for advertisers. That would in effect bury the cookie banner.

Another point is the planned extension of legitimate interest to the training of AI models, along with a reduction of approval requirements for reusing data for other purposes. Critics such as the data protection expert and CCC spokesperson Rainer Bendrath see this as a weakening of the right of access. According to earlier statements, around 1 800 amendments have been tabled in the European Parliament.

Dobrindt, Telekom, Fielmann and Apollo

Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) receives the prize for the second year in a row, this time for the modernisation of registers and the identification number law. The tax ID is to become a cross-authority personal identifier. Frank Rosengart of the Chaos Computer Club described the problem. The supposedly harmless number 12 345, he said, would make data sets from all state registers linkable.

In the "preventive" category, Deutsche Telekom took the award, among other things with a view to planned takeovers in the US mobile communications business. Fielmann and Apollo-Optik also come in for criticism: they sell smart glasses with a camera. netzpolitik.org called it a "surveillance Oscar" for the optician chains. An Australian study is cited, according to which assaults are more likely with smart glasses than with a phone camera. The authors also point to exploitative working conditions among contractors in Kenya, where recordings are evaluated, including toilet visits, naked people and private messages.

Northern Church and youth prize

The Evangelical Northern Church was criticised for obliging employees to use Microsoft 365 applications. The youth contribution dealt with the relationship of young people to surveillance technology under the heading "the broken rollercoaster".

The jury also looks internationally at the entanglement of standards and power. The expansion of ID card and social security numbers in the USA and the Russian conscription system serve as examples of how personal identifiers become instruments of control.

One number produces data from every state register. The identifier is the key that ties the registers together.