The experts presented their award to the municipality of RotterdamThe expert's nominations (in Dutch). Since 2006, municipalities have the legal means to refuse housing to “unemployed newcomers” in certain neighborhoods of the city. By now, fifteen municipalities turn out to consult the police on whether they are familiar with these people. Expert Bart the Koning about this nomination, “Citizens are being labeled as potential risks, and are in fact preventively punished for actions they have not yet committed, on the basis of criteria and data that are unknown to them”. The alderman responsible, alderman Schneider, did not come to accept the award, but also gave a written response. In Dutch, from 44:18.
The Felipe Rodriguez Award is the award Bits of Freedom presents to someone who has made an extraordinary contribution to the enhancement of privacy. This year, the award was presented to Open Whisper SystemsOpen Whisper Systems: the maker of the chat-app Signal and the protocol of the same name for end-to-end encryption. This enables users to communicate securely: only the receiver can decrypt the sender’s message. Making mass-surveillance impossible is Open Whisper System’s goal. Therefore, they even helped competing apps, such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Google’s Allo, with which suddenly over a billion people can communicate securely. During the beautiful acceptance speech by developer Lilia Kai, she urged those present to remain optimistic, “We cannot win a war against surveillance if we are losing a battle against ourselves.” This one is in English, from 1:34:25The English speech of Lilia Kai - Open Whisper Systems. And please, do read the full text of Lilia Kai’s speechLilia Kai's speech in text.