The Context-Dependence of Citizens’ Attitudes and Preferences Regarding Privacy and Security

Friedewald, Michaël; Lieshout, Marc van; Rung, Sven; Ooms, Merel

doi:10.1007/978-94-017-7376-8_3

Cited by 11 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…In recent surveys, researchers have therefore made use of vignettes to facilitate a shared understanding of the construct. This was the case in the recent PRISMS survey, and also the Globalisation of Personal Data survey of 2006 (Friedewald et al 2016;Zureik and Harling Stalker 2010). There are certainly good reasons to use scenarios, especially in cross-cultural survey research.…”

Section: Independent Variablesmentioning

confidence: 87%

“…Further, anxiety about government surveillance correlates with low support for antiterrorism policies (Best, Krueger, and Pearson-Merkowitz 2012). Trust in institutions has also been shown to be central to acceptance of intrusive surveillance technologies (Friedewald et al 2016;Patil et al 2014). Exploring this dynamic, several works on surveillance deal with the concept of trust (se e.g.…”

Section: Trust and Surveillancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…2 However, results have been somewhat contradictory, andimportant for this articlethe focus was mainly on "open" and not "secret" surveillance. The PRISMS and SurPRISE projects highlighted institutional trust and their findings downplayed the role of peer-to-peer, or social trust (Friedewald et al 2016;Pavone, Degli-Esposti, and Santiago 2015). The PACT project focused on three surveillance contextstravel, health, and the internet.…”

Section: Trust and Surveillancementioning

confidence: 99%

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Explaining attitudes to secret surveillance in post-communist societies

Svenonius

Björklund

2018

East European Politics

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This article seeks to explain public attitudes to secret surveillance. Secret surveillance, for example wiretapping by intelligence agencies, is a controversial activity that affects fundamental civil liberties in any democratic system. Several large research projects have recently attempted to explain how people form opinions about surveillance in general. Thereby privacy concerns and institutional trust are often highlighted. In this article, we argue that earlier research uses a too narrow definition of attitudes to surveillance and that secret surveillance is particularly sensitive due to its opaque character. We introduce a two-dimensional concept that focuses on rationalistic and emotional responses to surveillance. Drawing on new data from three post-communist societies-Estonia, Poland, and Serbiawe show how institutional trust is mainly responsible for explaining acceptance of secret surveillance, but not how one feels about it. Instead, it is the level of ontological insecurity and privacy concerns that explains this second dimension. The results are theorised and implications for future research are discussed.

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Section: Independent Variablesmentioning

confidence: 87%

Section: Trust and Surveillancementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Trust and Surveillancementioning

confidence: 99%

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Explaining attitudes to secret surveillance in post-communist societies

Svenonius

Björklund

2018

East European Politics

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“…2 A European project, Privacy and Security Mirrors (PRISMS) used both qualitative and quantitative approaches to consider many dimensions of privacy and security, including the appropriateness of using the trade-off framework for understanding citizen attitudes. Although attitudes towards government policies, technology, privacy, and security vary widely throughout the European countries studied, the general conclusion is that the trade-off frame does not explain how most Europeans structure their attitudes (Friedewald et al 2016;Pavone and Degli Esposti 2012). 3 A US context complements the rich European studies as these studies suggest that support for surveillance and the trade-off argument may rely on cultural variance (Henderson 2015;Budak et al 2017), are tied to type and goal of surveillance activities (Degli Espositi, Payone, and Santiago-Gomez 2017), and are policy specific (van den Broek et al 2017).…”

Section: The Security-liberty Trade-off Framework and Us Public Opinionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Assessing Dimensions of the Security-Liberty Trade-off in the United States

Krueger

Best²,

Johnson

2020

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The trade-off between security and liberty has been a leading frame for understanding public opinion about domestic surveillance policies. Most of the empirical work explicitly examining whether individuals meet the trade-off framework's core attitudinal assumptions comes from European studies. This study uses a survey of US residents to assess the veracity of the assumptions embedded in the trade-off framework, namely whether domestic counterterrorism policies are simultaneously viewed as improving security and decreasing liberty. We find that the vast majority of US respondents do not meet the basic attitudinal assumptions of the trade-off frame. Next, we evaluate the source of these attitudes with a focus on whether attitudes toward surveillance policies merely relate to core political values or whether they also depend on the messages from political leaders. We find that both political values and opinion leadership shape these attitudes. Finally, because general attitudes towards surveillance and privacy often fail to have practical implications, we assess whether these attitudes matter for understanding the structure of policy support. Our results show that heightened terrorism threat positively associates with increased support for counterterrorism policies only when people believe these policies are effective security tools.Indeed, this systematic assessment of public opinion and the supposed trade-off has been undertaken in certain contexts. Several large and multifaceted European studies have sought to test whether the trade-off

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“…It examined how technologies aimed at enhancing security are subjecting citizens to an increasing amount of surveillance and, in many cases, causing infringements of privacy and fundamental rights. The project involved a multidisciplinary inquiry into the concepts of privacy and security and their relationships, as well as a EUwide survey to determine whether people evaluate the introduction of security technologies in terms of a trade-off (Friedewald et al 2016). As a result, the project aimed to determine the factors that affect public assessment of the security and privacy implications of a given security technology.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A gap in the market: the conceptualisation of surveillance, security, privacy and trust in public opinion surveys.

Watson

Finn

Barnard‐Wills

2017

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Understanding the attitudes of members of the public towards the impact on their privacy of surveillance technologies used to enhance public security is an essential, but complex, consideration for policy makers, where public trust plays a central role. One way of understanding public attitudes is via the assessment of public opinion surveys. However, to ensure that public attitudes are appropriately being measured across all four concepts (privacy, security, trust and surveillance) it is necessary to consider how existing surveys conceptualise and operationalise these terms. This article undertakes precisely this consideration, in order to evaluate existing practices and provide recommendations for future public opinion surveys on surveillance technologies or practices intended to provide security, but which may impact privacy. We have found three issues relating to past approaches: past surveys do not always adequately define or conceptualise the terms they are employing. Second, surveys sometimes rely on the use of examples in lieu of definitions. Finally, and most importantly, we find that existing surveys do not always adequately examine the impact of the public's trust towards the use of surveillance technologies to enhance security, but which may affect their privacy.

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The Context-Dependence of Citizens’ Attitudes and Preferences Regarding Privacy and Security

Cited by 11 publications

References 17 publications

Explaining attitudes to secret surveillance in post-communist societies

Explaining attitudes to secret surveillance in post-communist societies

Assessing Dimensions of the Security-Liberty Trade-off in the United States

A gap in the market: the conceptualisation of surveillance, security, privacy and trust in public opinion surveys.

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