Stupid Security Competition

PRIVACY INTERNATIONAL'S "STUPID SECURITY" COMPETITION We've all been there. Standing for ages in a security line at an inconsequential office building only to be given a security pass that a high school student could have faked. Or being forced to take off our shoes at an airport that can't even screen its luggage. If you thought the accounting profession was bad news, just wait till you hear how stupid the security industry has become. Even before 9/11 a whole army of bumbling amateurs has taken it upon themselves to figure out pointless, annoying, intrusive, illusory and just plain stupid measures to "protect" our security. It's become a global menace. From the nightclub in Berlin that demands the home address of its patrons, to the phone company in Britain that won't let anyone pay more than fifty pounds a month from a bank account, the world has become infested with bumptious administrators competing to hinder or harass you. And often for no good reason whatever. The sensitive and sensible folk at Privacy International have endured enough of this treatment. So we are running an international competition to discover the world's most pointless, intrusive, stupid and self-serving security measures. Winners List Press release

The Short List

The short-list was culled from almost 5,000 nominations from 40 countries competing for the world's most egregious, annoying, inexplicable, intrusive and counter productive security measures. Nominations include the Australian government, the University of Texas, T-Mobile, San Francisco General Hospital and almost every airport authority in the world. Most Inexplicable Security Measures Most Intrusive Security Measures Most Counter Productive Security Most Annoying Security Measures Most Egregious Security Measures

Judges Panel

Declan McCullagh, journalist and agent provocateur, Washington DC, Dr Ian Brown, Privacy International Trustee and Director of the Foundation for Information Policy Research, London UK Dr Peter Neumann, Principal Scientist, SRI International Computer Science Laboratory and all-round security guru, USA Jerome Thorel, journalist and privacy activist, France Dr. Barbara Simons, Past President of ACM and Consulting Professor in Science, Technology and Society, Institute for International Studies, Stanford, USA Stephanie Perrin, Digital Discretion, former CPO, Zero Knowledge Systems, Canada Tim Dixon, Solicitor, and spokesman for the Australian Privacy Foundation Charles Platt, former senior writer for Wired magazine, and author of Anarchy Online and countless other works, USA Erich Moechel, journalist and principal troublemaker for Quintessenz, Austria