The online privacy group Privacy International handed out the dubious achievement awards on Wednesday during its 3rd annual "Computers, Privacy and Freedom" conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, officials said.

The NSA took top honors for the "Lifetime Menace Award." Despite the NSA's attempts to make their services more "user-friendly," Privacy International's David Banisar told news sources, the agency's half-century of spying was more than enough to win the award.

Carnivore Most Heinous

The FBI's Carnivore Internet project took the award for "Most Heinous Project," Banisar said.

Carnivore is the FBI's e-mail surveillance system designed to weed through innocuous e-mails and search out the meaty, eyebrow-raising messages. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), an online advocacy group, won a court order last summer to have the FBI disclose the workings of the program.

After making upgrades to the system, the FBI changed Carnivore's name to the less aggressive and perhaps more official-sounding "DCS1000."

Tampa Face-Mappers

City officials in Tampa, Florida, meanwhile, took the award for the "Worst Government Official/Agency," for its notorious decision to videotape the faces of fans attending this year's Super Bowl and match them against a criminal recognition program.

Privacy International's "Greatest Corporate Invader Award," went to ChoicePoint, a company that sold U.S. Department of Transportation data , and also supplied lists of Texas-based felons to the state of Florida so officials there could purge voting rolls for the 2000 Presidential Election.

Also-Rans

Other contenders for the "Lifetime Menace" award included IBM, for its Capitol Hill lobbying against privacy laws, and the Direct Marketing Association for "making sure that junk mail is officially delivered."

Nortel Networks and VeriSign's Network Solutions were runners-up for the "Greatest Corporate Invader Award." Network Solutions received special recognition for selling its WHOIS database to direct marketers, the privacy group said.

The U.S. Department of Justice took honors for the Cybercrime.gov project, while three Pennsylvania school districts were recognized for a school initiative that links a student biometrics program to school lunch programs.

And though it's now in the history books, the Clinton Administration's medical privacy regulations were targeted for allowing the sale of supposedly confidential patient data.

This year's "winners" were determined by a panel of judges that included Banisar, JunkBusters president Jason Catlett, Privacy Journal editor Bob Smith, Wayne Madsen of EPIC, and Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).