http://www.sciam.com/2000/0600issue/0600scicit6.html

(From the Scientific American, June 2000)

The Orwell Awards

In recognition of efforts to trample personal liberties on the electronic frontier

TORONTO--1984 was 16 years ago, but the culture of surveillance is still in full swing, say privacy advocates who gathered for the Orwell Awards 2000, presented at the 10th annual Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy. In a ceremony that opened to the rousing strains of South Park's "Blame Canada," Simon Davies of Privacy International in Washington, D.C., presented the "honors" to those in the U.S. deemed by a panel of judges to have posed the worst threats to privacy in the past year.

Davies, dressed as the glossy-pated Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers films, started with the Worst Single Project category, whose laurels went to the Federal Aviation Administration's idea to deploy whole-body x-ray scanners in U.S. airports. A fictitious "Dr. Milton Exray", accepting the award on behalf of the FAA, extolled future developments, including ultrasound and DNA profiling to take pictures of potential terrorists even before they are born.

-- viewer (justp@ssing.by), May 11, 2000