Jack Straw and Ann Widdecombe tipped to win Big Brother

Organised by human rights group Privacy International, The Big Brothers are designed to highlight how invasion of privacy has become a "vast industry that threatens the rights of everyone in Britain".

The awards have also become an annual event in Austria, France, Germany, Switzerland and the United States.

Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, said: "Privacy will be the most important civil liberties issue for the new century, and we intend showing its importance by outing the privacy invaders."

This year's ceremony will be hosted by comedian Mark Thomas, and will take place at the London School of Economics on 4 December.

Awards will also be given to the individuals and organisations that have made an outstanding contribution to the protection of privacy.

According to the organisers, the shortlist for the five categories of awards is as follows:

MOST INVASIVE COMPANY:
The award in this category will be fought between I-CD Publishing, which created the reverse directory CD "UK Info Disk"; the Visionics Corporation, responsible for the new generation of CCTV automatic face recognition software; and Envision Licensing, the organisation behind Britain's TV Licensing regime.

MOST APPALLING PROJECT:
The lead contender in this is said to be the government's "snooping" legislation - otherwise known as the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Act. Other shortlisted nominees include the Landlordsdata.com database, which offers an online blacklist of tenants and the national DNA Database.

MOST HEINOUS GOVERNMENT ORGANISATION:
This will be a contest between the Home Office, the Department of Trade and Industry (for allowing employers to snoop on their staff), and Customs and Excise.

WORST PUBLIC SERVANT:
Jack Straw was consistently nominated for this category, but as he won it last year, Privacy International is reluctant to give him this award once more. Anne Widdicombe was not far behind in the nominations and Charles Clarke made the shortlist for his shepherding of the RIP legislation.

LIFETIME MENACE AWARD:
Jack Straw is so far ahead of the field that the others will have a near impossible task beating him. Other shortlisted nominees are British Telecom, and GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) for what Privacy International describes as "unjustified and unwarranted endemic communications surveillance".