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Testing Snowden’s Hypothesis Does Mere Awareness Drive Opposition to Government Surveillance?
Abstract
This study explores the antecedents of public support for government surveillance of the private electronic communications and internet browsing of American citizens. The National Security Agency whistleblower, Edward Snowden, famously hoped that uncovering surveillance by the state would create awareness of those practices that would be sufficient to induce public opposition. Other theories suggest that support for these policies might be driven by perceptions of terrorist threat or personal risk of surveillance. We suspect, however, that most citizens do not imagine their own privacy rights to be at risk due to government surveillance, but instead believe members of other groups will be targeted. Therefore, we hypothesize that empathy toward vulnerable outgroups should strongly dampen enthusiasm for surveillance, above and beyond awareness and personal concerns and interests. A nationally representative survey finds knowledge about government surveillance to be higher than many presume, but variation in knowledge or personal interests are largely uncorrelated with support. As hypothesized, empathy for outgroups strongly predicts opposition to these policies, above and beyond a host of other factors. Two experiments further corroborate the result: Outgroup empathy, not exposure to information about actual surveillance practices, boosts public opposition.
... Much of the existing research examining public attitudes toward government surveillance has been focused on counter-terrorism surveillance by federal law enforcement agencies, such as the National Security Agency (see, e.g., Cohrs et al. 2005;Nakhaie and de Lint 2013;Valentino et al. 2020). While likely relevant to understanding police surveillance attitudes, there are important differences between terrorism and the types of domestic "street" crime that policing is typically associated with, including differences in the likelihood of victimization and stereotypes and narratives about the causes and perpetrators. ...
... Fear of crime and fear of terrorism have been linked to support for various forms of government surveillance and civil liberties restrictions in previous studies among European participants (Gurinskaya 2020; Trudinger and Steckermeier 2017; van Heek, Arning, and Ziefle 2017). A recent study of American attitudes toward government surveillance found that participants' level of threat perception of a terrorist attack was negatively associated with their concern over government surveillance, opposition to various government surveillance practices, and unwillingness to trade civil liberties for greater security (Valentino et al. 2020). Fear and concern about crime has also been associated with punitive attitudes toward sentencing and punishment for adult and juvenile defendants and prisoners (Costelloe, Chiricos, and Gertz 2009). ...
... Previous studies have found that fear of a terrorist attack is associated with greater support for government surveillance (Malhotra and Popp 2012;Valentino et al. 2020). A possible distinction may be that many of the more prominent forms of counter-terror government surveillance have been more overtly presented by authorities as a necessary preventative tool for intercepting future terrorist attacks, which could explain why there is clearer link between fearing terrorism and tolerating government surveillance than there is with crime. ...
Public attitudes toward domestic police surveillance have important implications for its political salience and regulation. An increasing number of jurisdictions have sought to regulate law enforcement surveillance, in part due to growing concerns over issues related to privacy, civil liberties, and the potential for bias (Beyea and Kebde 2021; Chivukula and Takemoto 2021; Smyth 2021). This study explores what factors help to predict and shape public attitudes toward police surveillance. Two groups of participants (n = 131 and n = 299) completed measures of authoritarianism, fear of crime, consumer surveillance technology use, and attitudes toward private-sector surveillance (such as surveillance by private companies, employers, or citizens) and police surveillance. Demographic factors (age, race/ethnicity, education level, gender, and political leaning) were also examined. Of these factors, legal authoritarianism, level of interaction with surveillance-related consumer technology, and attitudes toward private-sector surveillance were positively associated with the acceptance of police surveillance.
... Furthermore, the overarching impact of incidents involving stolen and misused personal data stemming from excessive surveillance can be difficult for citizens to fully comprehend (Valentino et al. 2020). It is largely an abstract issue, plausibly perceived as less significant compared to objectively visible crises such as floods, wildfires, and hurricanes, where the harm to people is more visible (Boin et al. 2020). ...
... Of course, this does not mean that we do not believe that citizens are not skeptical about surveillance (Valentino et al. 2020). They are perhaps more skeptical than policymakers, although there are no studies directly comparing the different attitudes (Lyon 2007). ...
The conventional approaches in the crisis and surveillance literature posit that crisis causes increased surveillance. In this paper, we invert this relationship and instead explore how surveillance causes crises. The argument is made that excessive collection and use of personal information through for example, artificial intelligence and algorithms without clear purposes by public and private organizations must be understood as a creeping crisis. This excessive surveillance leads to vulnerabilities and complexities in organizations, making them highly susceptible to data hacks, data leaks, and cyber attacks. Consequently, organizational and political crises are bound to occur. We identify the main challenges for governments, regulatory agencies, and citizens in this creeping crisis. Explanations focusing on policy attention, policy responsiveness, and policy framing are considered for why excessive surveillance has yet to be recognized as a crisis.
... This was natural, as the problem of restricting civil liberties broadly only came to the fore globally with COVID-19, with even established democracies contemplating whether restrictions on protests (to avoid contagion) and even on the media (to avoid panic) were necessary, making citizens' reactions to emergency measures in a broad sense a salient topic (Alsan et al., 2020, Brouard et al., 2020. Also, the question of affectedness has rarely been scrutinized, with the exception of studies focusing on the attitude of minorities to enhanced measures of control and surveillance (Hetherington and Suhay, 2011;Valentino et al., 2021). ...
... This is because Latinos might be more affected by wiretapping, irrespective of alleged terrorist activity. At the same time, citizens are more willing to sacrifice the civil liberties of their countrymen for their own security, and this is especially the case when the affected group invites little sympathy (Valentino et al., 2021). ...
During the COVID-19 pandemic, some governments took measures to restrict political liberties, claiming that these restrictions were necessary to contain the spread of the virus. In this study, we scrutinize differences in citizens’ willingness to accept three types of political restrictions: restricting the media, banning protests, and introducing extensive state surveillance. We focus on two European countries: Austria and Hungary. While we find that perceived health threats, political values, ideological orientation, and political trust are important predictors of accepting political restrictions, we also find that citizens differ in their willingness to support the three types of restrictions depending on whether the given measure affects them directly. We also find differences between Austria and Hungary concerning the way political trust and political values affect the acceptance of restrictions, which may be rooted in the larger polarization of Hungarian society. Furthermore, we observe that perceived health threats, political values, ideological orientation, and political trust are important predictors of accepting political restrictions.
... This is especially interesting for OSINT, as the gathering and analysis of public data online are not observable for the individual and the effects are rather abstract for people, which might affect their evaluation of the policies and measures [19]. However, in their study on the effects of the Snowden revelation on the public's opinion, Valentino et al. [53] show that awareness is not associated with the rejection of SOSTs. Thus, following Trüdinger and Steckermeier [52], we formulated a more exploratory hypothesis using awareness of OSINT as an interactive factor: H5: The level of awareness of OSINT changes the associations between cyber threat perceptions, privacy concerns, privacy behavior, as well as perceived need for OSINT and OSINT acceptance. ...
... Protective behaviors enacted to preserve online privacy [6,28,29] OSINT Awareness Knowledge on the existence and use of OSINT [19,52,53] ...
The use of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) to monitor and detect cybersecurity threats is gaining popularity among Cybersecurity Emergency or Incident Response Teams (CERTs/CSIRTs). They increasingly use semi-automated OSINT approaches when monitoring cyber threats for public infrastructure services and incident response. Most of the systems use publicly available data, often focusing on social media due to timely data for situational assessment. As indirect and affected stakeholders, the acceptance of OSINT systems by users, as well as the conditions which influence the acceptance, are relevant for the development of OSINT systems for cybersecurity. Therefore, as part of the ethical and social technology assessment, we conducted a survey (N=1,093), in which we asked participants about their acceptance of OSINT systems, their perceived need for open source surveillance, as well as their privacy behavior and concerns. Further, we tested if the awareness of OSINT is an interactive factor that affects other factors. Our results indicate that cyber threat perception and the perceived need for OSINT are positively related to acceptance, while privacy concerns are negatively related. The awareness of OSINT, however, has only shown effects on people with higher privacy concerns. Here, particularly high OSINT awareness and limited privacy concerns were associated with higher OSINT acceptance. Lastly, we provide implications for further research and the use of OSINT systems for cybersecurity by authorities. As OSINT is a framework rather than a single technology, approaches can be selected and combined to adhere to data minimization and anonymization as well as to leverage improvements in privacy-preserving computation and machine learning innovations. Regarding the use of OSINT, the results suggest to favor approaches that provide transparency to users regarding the use of the systems and the data they gather.
... Previous work has shown that perceptions of threats from terrorism, immigration, etc.-and emotions such as anger and fear related to these threats 2 -can evoke strong reactions among citizens when it comes to political support and voting behavior (see, e.g., Merolla & Zechmeister, 2009;Stevens & Vaughan-Williams, 2016;Vasilopoulos et al., 2019). In particular, studies on the role of threat in times of terrorism demonstrate that a perceived threat to security can directly increase support for counterterrorist policies and restrictions on civil liberties (see, e.g., Davis & Silver, 2004;Dietrich & Crabtree, 2019;Huddy et al., 2005;Valentino et al., 2020). Moreover, there is empirical evidence from research on policy support during the COVID-19 pandemic that perceived threat (related to the pandemic) can foster acceptance of state surveillance (see, e.g., Wnuk et al., 2020). ...
Surveillance policies aimed at combating terrorism and improving public security can also lead to constraints on civil liberties. In view of this trade‐off between the potential benefits and risks of surveillance, it is particularly important to study how effectiveness considerations shape public support for surveillance. We argue that effectiveness perceptions enhance policy support, but that the manner in which citizens view policy effectiveness depends on their perceptions of threats related to terrorism and to violations of civil liberties. Using data from a factorial survey experiment in Germany, we show that policy effectiveness is the most relevant predictor of citizens' support for different surveillance measures. Moreover, we find evidence that depending on the scope of surveillance, respondents perceiving threats to their liberty rely much less heavily on policy effectiveness as a criterion for evaluating policies, compared to those whose threat perception is low.
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... Even though this study found a generally robust relationship between online news and political engagement relationship one must be cognizant that incremental developments in big data and artificial intelligence means that the technologies supporting censorship and surveillance can be even more omnipresent, pervasive, intrusive, and effective in the future to control information flows, monitor citizens, and debilitate democratic engagement. This applies not only for authoritarian regimes like China that already have in place sophisticated offline and online government apparatuses for censorship and surveillance (Roberts 2018), but also liberal democracies as many have followed the example of the United States post-9/11 and put in place more subtle forms of surveillance to monitor citizens' online activities (Valentino et al. 2020). Theoretically, this means that cleaved moderation remains a distinct possibility in the future where increased online news use may be related to decreased political engagement. ...
Much research has shown that online news engenders greater political participation, but less attention has been paid to how the relationship can be suppressed by government online surveillance and censorship, especially as Internet freedoms continue to decline in many parts of the world. Drawing from 2017–20 World Value Survey and Varieties of Democracy project data, we conducted multilevel analyses across forty-four countries from seven continents that have different political and media systems. Results showed that online news and online surveillance were positively related to political engagement while online censorship was negatively related. Cross-level interactions also showed some support for the informational theory of repression, whereby the relationships among online news, surveillance, and engagement were conditioned at different levels of online censorship. The results suggest that while country-level online surveillance and censorship is highly correlated, varying levels can engender or suppress political engagement in different ways, which have implications for future studies on the dynamics of government digital repression and citizen participation in politics from a global comparative perspective.
Collective action can be a crucial tool for enabling individuals to combat crime in their communities. In this research, we investigated individuals' intentions to mobilize against organized crime, a particularly impactful form of crime characterized by its exercises of power over territories and communities. We focused on individuals' views and perceptions of state authorities, examining how these views may be linked to intentions for collective mobilization. Using a large dataset with participants from eight countries (NTotal = 2088), we tested two distinct and opposing indirect paths through which perceived state responsiveness may be associated with collective mobilization intentions against organized crime, namely increased collective community efficacy (a Catalyst Indirect Effect) and diminished perceived threat from criminal groups (a Complacency Indirect Effects). Results showed that state responsiveness was associated with stronger collective action intentions through increased collective community efficacy. There was also some evidence of reduced collective action intentions through diminished perceived threat. These findings highlight the complex role of state responsiveness in predicting people's intentions to mobilize against collective problems in their communities. Implications of the findings, limitations and future directions are discussed.
While conventional terrorism has long been associated with enhanced support for surveillance, scholars have not determined whether variation in the type and outcome of terror attacks, including those emanating from cyberspace, influences public support for these policies. Further, existing studies typically examine public opinion in a single country, thereby failing to investigate cross-national trends in support for surveillance. In this article, we outline a theoretical relationship between cyberattacks and support for surveillance measures and then, through survey experiments conducted in the United States, United Kingdom, and Israel, explore whether variation in both the type (conventional or cyberterrorism) and outcome (non-lethal or lethal outcomes) of attacks influences support for a range of surveillance tactics. We find that while participants do not base their support for surveillance on attack type or outcome and do not differentiate between surveillance tactics when formulating their preferences, there are considerable cross-national differences in support. Participants from Israel generally responded more favorably to all forms of surveillance, independent of experimental treatment, with British respondents demonstrating high levels of support for CCTV cameras. American respondents, however, were generally less supportive of surveillance measures across treatments, with the differences being most notable in their relative reluctance to support the use of CCTV cameras. These findings have important implications not only for the sustainability of national policies but also for international collaboration to manage emerging risks.
Celem artykułu jest przedstawienie opinii polskich migrantów w Wielkiej Brytanii na temat skutków brexitu dla Unii Europejskiej, Wielkiej Brytanii, Polski oraz samych respondentów i ich rodzin. Ustalono ją na podstawie analizy wyników sondażu przeprowadzonego wśród nich, a zaprezentowano na tle wyników badań opinii publicznej na temat członkostwa Zjednoczonego Królestwa w Unii Europejskiej. Badania takie w Wielkiej Brytanii prowadzone są regularnie od lat siedemdziesiątych ubiegłego wieku. W artykule analizowane są przekonania migrantów zarobkowych deklarujących swoje zaangażowanie (bądź jego brak) w organizacje polonijne działające w Wielkiej Brytanii. Postawiono tezę, że osoby zaangażowane w działalność organizacji polonijnych częściej aniżeli osoby niezaangażowane dostrzegają negatywne skutki brexitu dla Unii Europejskiej, Wielkiej Brytanii, Polski oraz ich samych i ich rodzin. W odpowiedziach na pytania dotyczące ewentualnych pozytywnych bądź negatywnych skutków brexitu przeważały te drugie. W dyskusji poszukuje się odpowiedzi na pytanie, dlaczego migranci z Polski częściej obawiają się negatywnych skutków brexitu dla Wielkiej Brytanii i Unii Europejskiej, a rzadziej dla Polski, dla nich samych i ich najbliższej rodziny.
Supporting surveillance policies is a risky proposition in the sense that people are uncertain about the consequences of these policies. We argue that political trust serves as a mechanism to reduce uncertainty in circumstances where civil liberties are in jeopardy. Building on different theoretical perspectives, we examined whether trust is more relevant to the acceptance of surveillance policies for citizens with high or low levels of information about those policies. Using survey data from a German research project on surveillance, we estimated the effects of political trust and policy-specific information on acceptance of surveillance. Whereas political trust fostered the acceptance of these policies, information about surveillance alone did not affect the acceptance of surveillance in any way. Estimating the interaction between political trust and policy-specific information showed that political trust was particularly important for surveillance policy evaluations of well-informed citizens. Thus, we did not find evidence that individuals compensated for informational constraints by relying on political trust.
Recent scholarship has discovered significant racial/ethnic group variation in response to political threats such as immigration and terrorism. Surprisingly, minority groups often simultaneously perceive themselves to be at greater risk from such threats and yet still prefer more open immigration policies and civil liberties protections. We suggest a group-level empathy process may explain this puzzle: Due to their higher levels of empathy for other disadvantaged groups, many minority group members support protections for others even when their own interests are threatened. Little is known, however, about the unique properties of group empathy or its role in policy opinion formation. In this study, we examine the reliability and validity of our new measure of group empathy, the Group Empathy Index (GEI), demonstrating that it is distinct from other social and political predispositions such as ethnocentrism, social dominance orientation, authoritarianism, ideology, and partisanship. We then propose a theory about the development of group empathy in reaction to life experiences based on one’s race/ethnicity, gender, age, and education. Finally, we examine the power of group empathy to predict policy attitudes and political behavior.
After September 11, much legislation has been passed that has impacted negatively upon the tradition of limited government and entrenched privacy rights. Scholarly interest is attracted to the mechanism by which regimes of control and surveillance have disestablished rights without engendering substantial popular resistance. In this article, we analyze a survey of Americans and Canadians on their attitudes toward surveillance and security-based legislation. We develop an argument that trust in government (TGB) produces a tolerance for legislation that limits citizen’s rights. We evaluate our model for both Canada and the United States, given the scholarly debate that these countries differ regionally in their level of TGB and support of statism. We posit that support for surveillance and security legislation is related to respondents’ trust of government, airport officials, and low tolerance of minorities (LTMs). Results suggest that TGB and airport officials as well as LTMs are the key predictors of surveillance and security legislation in both Canada and the United States. Although Quebeckers are more supportive and residents of the U.S. South are less supportive of security and surveillance legislation than the rest of North America, much of the difference in support for such policies can be accounted for by the level of public TGB.
Explanatory models of attitudes toward U.S. domestic counterterrorism policy routinely incorporate individual concern over
terrorism, but uniformly disregard concern about the government’s use of domestic surveillance. Indeed, one of the most prominent
works of this kind explicitly argues that ordinary Americans will not perceive that government monitoring targets people like
themselves and thus domestic surveillance programs will not generate anxiety. We question this assumption on theoretical and
historical grounds. Our research uses a unique probability sample survey to demonstrate that significant portions of ordinary
Americans feel anxious about domestic government monitoring. Moreover, the results show that anxiety about government monitoring
negatively relates to attitudes toward domestic counterterrorism policies. Although never included in previous models, and
even plainly dismissed as irrelevant, felt anxiety about government monitoring importantly predicts attitudes about domestic
counterterrorism policies.
The past decade has spurred interest in the potential connection between U.S. government monitoring and political activity. Interestingly, these recent studies demonstrate that rather than chilling political activity, government monitoring in the United States positively associates with political engagement. This article seeks to determine why, for ordinary Americans, government monitoring positively relates to political participation. We argue that the balance of discrete negative emotional reactions to government monitoring provides an answer. We propose that U.S. government monitoring generates more anger than anxiety. Furthermore, we suggest that anger about government monitoring will positively associate with political activity whereas anxiety about monitoring will negatively associate with political engagement. We find support for these hypotheses using data drawn from a unique probability sample survey of U.S. residents. The dominant and discrete reaction of anger about monitoring trumps the less common reaction of anxiety, which leads to a net positive association with political activity.
Although more is probably known about the causes of political participation than any other political behavior, the research program suffers in that it generally assumes citizens operate within an unproblematic surveillance context. This article argues that the growing use of the Internet for political participation and the government’s expanded electronic surveillance capacities make this assumption increasingly dubious. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s insights concerning surveillance and resistance, this article develops empirical hypotheses related to surveillance and Internet political participation. Testing these hypotheses using data derived from a unique probability sample survey of U.S. Internet users, surveillance is shown to influence online political activity. Those who oppose the current administration, and who perceive the government monitors their Internet behavior, participate in politics online at the highest rates. Finally, the implications of these results are discussed.
The perception of threat and the experience of anxiety are distinct but related public reactions to terrorism. Anxiety increases risk aversion, potentially undercutting support for dangerous military action, consistent with terrorists' typical aims. Conversely, perceived threat increases a desire for retaliation and promotes animosity toward a threatening enemy, in line with the usual goals of affected governments. Findings from a national telephone survey confirm the differing political effects of anxiety and perceived threat. The minority of Americans who experienced high levels of anxiety in response to the September 11 attacks were less supportive of aggressive military action against terrorists, less approving of President Bush, and favored increased American isolationism. In contrast, the majority of Americans who perceived a high threat of future terrorism in the United States (but were not overly anxious) supported the Bush administration's antiterrorism policies domestically and internationally.
In the tradition of research on political tolerance and democratic rights in context, this study uses a national survey of Americans conducted shortly after the September 11, 2001 attack on America to investigate people's willingness to trade off civil liberties for greater personal safety and security.
We find that the greater people's sense of threat, the lower their support for civil liberties. This effect interacts, however, with trust in government. The lower people's trust in government, the less willing they are to trade off civil liberties for security, regardless of their level of threat. African Americans are much less willing to trade civil liberties for security than whites or Latinos, even with other factors taken into account. This may reflect their long-standing commitment to the struggle for rights. Liberals are less willing to trade off civil liberties than moderates or conservatives, but liberals converge toward the position taken by conservatives when their sense of the threat of terrorism is high.
While not a forecast of the future, the results indicate that Americans' commitment to democratic values is highly contingent on other concerns and that the context of a large-scale threat to national or personal security can induce a substantial willingness to give up rights.
What causes some people to stand in solidarity with those from other races, religions, or nationalities, even when that solidarity does not seem to benefit the individual or their group? Seeing Us in Them examines outgroup empathy as a powerful predisposition in politics that pushes individuals to see past social divisions and work together in complex, multicultural societies. It also reveals racial/ethnic intergroup differences in this predisposition, rooted in early patterns of socialization and collective memory. Outgroup empathy explains why African Americans vehemently oppose the border wall and profiling of Arabs, why Latinos are welcoming of Syrian refugees and support humanitarian assistance, why some white Americans march in support of Black Lives Matter through a pandemic, and even why many British citizens oppose Brexit. Outgroup empathy is not naïve; rather it is a rational and necessary force that helps build trust and maintain stable democratic norms of compromise and reciprocity.
Empathy has long been a topic of interest to psychologists, but it has been studied in a sometimes bewildering number of ways. In this volume, Mark Davis offers a thorough, evenhanded review of contemporary empathy research, especially work that has been carried out by social and personality psychologists.Davis' approach is explicitly multidimensional. He draws careful distinctions between situational and dispositional “antecedents” of empathy, cognitive and noncognitive “internal processes,” affective and nonaffective “intrapersonal outcomes,” and the “interpersonal behavioral outcomes” that follow. Davis presents a novel organizational model to help classify and interpret previous findings. This book will be of value in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses on altruism, helping, nad moral development.
In this study, a two-stage least squares regression analysis of data from the Pew Research Center's Privacy Panel Survey sought to untangle the relationships among surveillance concern, its antecedents, and the acceptability of surveillance as an attitudinal outcome. The analysis assumes the endogeneity of surveillance concerns, drawing from theoretical arguments. Surveillance concerns, as predicted by empirical antecedents (perception of privacy control, past negative experiences, surveillance awareness, and information sensitivity), significantly influence surveillance acceptability. Significant exogenous determinants of surveillance acceptability include perceived public benefit and self-identified ideological stance.
We examine the trade-offs associated with using Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) interface for subject recruitment. We first describe MTurk and its promise as a vehicle for performing low-cost and easy-to-field experiments. We then assess the internal and external validity of experiments performed using MTurk, employing a framework that can be used to evaluate other subject pools. We first investigate the characteristics of samples drawn from the MTurk population. We show that respondents recruited in this manner are often more representative of the U.S. population than in-person convenience samples-the modal sample in published experimental political science-but less representative than subjects in Internet-based panels or national probability samples. Finally, we replicate important published experimental work using MTurk samples. © The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology. All rights reserved.
In recent years, surveillance has become an increasingly salient political issue in the United States. In this article we present data on public opinion about privacy invasions and surveillance techniques since 1990. Generally speaking, the polls show that concern about threats to personal privacy has been growing in recent years. Although the public was temporarily willing to expand the government’s investigative powers in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, support for most forms of surveillance has declined.
This paper examines public opinion on National Security Agency (NSA) mass surveillance programs of Americans. A new theory, developed and tested in this paper, explicates the effect of political efficacy on creating greater citizen-centric e-governance. Its propositions state that the higher citizens' perceived self-efficacy in political knowledge and the higher citizens' perceived fairness of government procedures and outcomes, the more engaged citizens would be in using technology for better governance and the more vocal in their views on NSA surveillance programs. This paper adopts a multi-method research approach to examine citizens' approval/disapproval of NSA surveillance programs: (1) critical discourse analysis of tweets exchanged among citizens and interest groups in Twittersphere and (2) logistic regression analysis of survey data collected from a random sample public opinion poll of Americans. The findings of both analyses provide evidence that citizens hold strong views toward NSA surveillance programs. These findings indicate that government needs to be more efficacious in communicating about surveillance programs more transparently to garner greater citizens' approval for its surveillance programs. The findings also provide preliminary evidence for good explanatory power of the theory of citizen-centric e-governance. The theory explains effectively the relationship between government practicing greater political efficacious behavior and citizens engaging in more citizen-centric e-governance in governing government surveillance programs for a better balance between security and privacy.
It is widely assumed that political action is motivated most powerfully by issues that impinge immediately and tangibly upon private life. For example, this assumption pervades the aggregate research that has reported consistent relationships between general economic conditions and congressional election outcomes (e.g., Kramer, 1971). Our analysis of individual-level data, however, indicates that voting in congressional elections from 1956 to 1976 was influenced hardly at all by personal economic grievances. Those voters unhappy with changes in their financial circumstances, or those who had recently been personally affected by unemployment, showed little inclination to punish candidates of the incumbent party for their personal misfortunes. The connection between economic conditions and politics was provided, instead, by judgments of a more general, collective kind--e.g., by judgments regarding recent trends in general business conditions, and, more powerfully, by judgments about the relative competence of the two major parties to manage national economic problems. These collective economic judgments had little to do with privately experienced economic discontents. Rather they stemmed from voters' partisan predispositions and from their appraisal of changes in national economic conditions.
This paper uses data from Google Trends on the search volume of search terms from before and after the surveillance revelations of June 2013 for eleven countries to analyze whether Google users' search behavior changed as a result. The surveillance revelations are treated as an exogenous shock in information about how closely users' internet searches were being monitored by the US government. Each search term was independently rated for its degree of privacy sensitivity along multiple dimensions. Using panel data, our results suggest that cross-nationally, users were less likely to search using search terms that they believed might get them in trouble with the US government. In the US, this was the main subset of search terms that were affected. However, internationally there was also a drop in traffic for search terms that were rated as personally sensitive. These results suggest that there is a potential for chilling effects on search behavior from government surveillance on the Internet. This also suggest that government surveillance programs may affect the international competitiveness of internet firms.
Faced with the threat of terrorism, many Americans have supported policies aimed at promoting security even when those policies
possibly infringe upon civil liberties. To what extent does this policy support constitute a “terror exception” made by citizens
who would otherwise seek the preservation of those liberties, and to what extent does it represent a more general rejection
of constitutional principles? In order to address this question, attitudes regarding anti-terror policies must be viewed in
a broader context. Toward this end, we examine data from a split-ballot experiment included as part of the 2006–2007 Congressional
Elections Study. Respondents were asked policy items focused on either terrorism or serious crime. We find that respondents
are almost as willing to sacrifice civil liberties to fight crime as to fight terrorism, and that attitudes regarding terrorism
and crime policy exhibit considerable structural similarity. These findings cast doubt on the civil libertarian convictions
of Americans even outside of the realm of anti-terror policy.
The authors examine how changes in perceptions of threat affect individuals’ policy views as well as the political implications of this relationship. They administered a survey experiment to a representative sample of the U.S. population in which they exogenously manipulated individuals’ perceived likelihood of a future terrorist attack on American soil and assessed subsequent changes in support for terrorism-related public policies. They find that reducing perceived threat substantially decreases support for policies intended to combat terrorism and that this effect is concentrated among Democrats who believe another terrorist attack is likely to occur. These results suggest that threat, as part of the larger information environment, can alter partisan divisions on controversial policies.
This U.S.-based research attempts to understand the relationships between users’ perceptions about Internet privacy concerns, the need for government surveillance, government intrusion concerns, and the willingness to disclose personal information required to complete online transactions. We test a theoretical model based on a privacy calculus framework and Asymmetric Information Theory using data collected from 422 respondents. Using LISREL, we found that privacy concerns have an important influence on the willingness to disclose personal information required to transact online. The perceived need for government surveillance was negatively related to privacy concerns and positively related to willingness to disclose personal information. On the other hand, concerns about government intrusion were positively related to privacy concerns. The theoretical framework of our study can be applied across other countries.
This study focuses on exploring Internet literacy and social awareness as antecedents to Internet users' attitudes towards government surveillance in the Internet environment. Previously developed instruments for Internet literacy, social awareness, perceived need for government surveillance, and government intrusion concerns have been employed in the study. The relationships are measured and explored through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) followed by linear regression models. Three of the four hypothesized relationships were found to be statistically significant - social awareness positively and Internet literacy negatively related to the perceived need for government surveillance, and Internet literacy positively related to the government intrusion concerns. The contribution of this research is in the attempt to explore surveillance attitudes in the post-9/11 American society. The study presents empirically tested relationships which are important for developing well-balanced policies of security protection and civil liberties.
Ethnocentrismâour tendency to partition the human world into in-groups and out-groupsâpervades societies around the world. Surprisingly, though, few scholars have explored its role in political life. Donald Kinder and Cindy Kam fill this gap with Us Against Them, their definitive explanation of how ethnocentrism shapes American public opinion. Arguing that humans are broadly predisposed to ethnocentrism, Kinder and Kam explore its impact on our attitudes toward an array of issues, including the war on terror, humanitarian assistance, immigration, the sanctity of marriage, and the reform of social programs. The authors ground their study in previous theories from a wide range of disciplines, establishing a new framework for understanding what ethnocentrism is and how it becomes politically consequential. They also marshal a vast trove of survey evidence to identify the conditions under which ethnocentrism shapes public opinion. While ethnocentrism is widespread in the United States, the authors demonstrate that its political relevance depends on circumstance. Exploring the implications of these findings for political knowledge, cosmopolitanism, and societies outside the United States, Kinder and Kam add a new dimension to our understanding of how democracy functions.
The Advent of Surveillance Realism: Public Opinion and Activist Responses to the Snowden Leaks
- Lina Dencik
- Jonathan Cable
Dencik, Lina, and Jonathan Cable. 2017. "The Advent of Surveillance Realism: Public
Opinion and Activist Responses to the Snowden Leaks." International Journal of
Communication 11:763-81.
More Than Half of U.S. Adults Trust Law Enforcement to Use Facial Recognition Responsibly
- Aaron Smith
Smith, Aaron. 2019. "More Than Half of U.S. Adults Trust Law Enforcement to Use Facial
Recognition Responsibly." Pew Research Center: Internet & Technology (September 5).
- Edward Snowden
Snowden, Edward. 2013. Open Letter. Washington Post, December 17. http://www.washington
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