Thank you very much for your invitation to the BigBrotherAwards gala on 16 Oct 2009. Unfortunately I am unable to come, so I would like to make my letter a kind of welcome address.

My heartfelt congratulations on the tenth anniversary of the German BigBrotherAwards!

With your commitment, you have been pioneering civil rights and data protection in the past years, and you did this long before many others discovered these issues. We need civil society to shake up the politicians. We must raise awareness of the fact that protecting privacy is essential to the quality of our democratic constitution.

The recent surveillance scandals in major German corporations have raised consciousness, as did the ground-breaking ruling of the German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) in 2008 on indiscriminate remote searches of private computers by police forces. This affects not only the relation of the citizen towards the state. The new constitutional right defined by this ruling, which protects the confidentiality and integrity of private information systems, touches on all areas of legislation. The effects of the ruling have so far been underestimated. But they will have to be considered in the new data protection law that must finally be created in the new election period. A comprehensive modernisation is required and has been discussed for many years. This reform fell victim to September 11th. In the aftermath, the protection of privacy has not been strengthened, it has been all but dismantled. Ever again, we have appealed to the Constitutional Court – recently against communications data retention and against the reform of the law on the Federal Criminal Police Office  – to fight back against restrictions of civil liberties. And with some success.

The German Constitution, the Grundgesetz, had its sixtieth anniversary this year. This is not only a cause for celebration, it makes it all the more necessary to highlight threats to our basic rights; just as you do so successfully through the BigBrotherAwards.

It is worthwhile to fight for freedom!