International surveillance and privacy opinion research
Conducted under the Globalization of Personal Data Project
Lead researcher: Elia Zureik
Department of Sociology
Queen's University
With assistance from Emily Smith, Lynda Harling Stalker, and Shannon Yurke
To our knowledge, this is the first cross-national study of its kind that surveys attitudes to and experiences with the global flow of personal data, with special focus on privacy and surveillance. To accomplish this objective, a nine-country international survey that is part of a larger study on the global flow of personal data using face-to-face and telephone interviews is being undertaken in: Canada and the US in North America, Brazil and Mexico in Latin America, China and Japan in East Asia, and France, Hungary, and Spain in Europe. It is hoped that the surveys will be completed by the end of July 2006, and data will be made available for analysis immediately thereafter. The quantitative surveys were preceded by qualitative focus group interviews in the above countries. The latter data is now available for analysis.
The research project is guided by the following overarching concerns:
Relevant Publications
Surveillance, Privacy, and the Globalization of Personal Information: International Comparisons
Edited by Elia Zureik, L. Lynda Harling Stalker, Emily Smith, David Lyon, and Yolande E. Chan
McGill-Queen's University Press, 2010
The world has become familiar with the unprecedented growth of surveillance after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, but a comprehensive analysis of the public's opinion of how their privacy is being protected or invaded has been unavailable - until now. Surveillance, Privacy, and the Globalization of Personal Information reports the findings of an international survey of citizens' experiences with newly implemented security measures and their perceptions about privacy issues.
Policy Studies Room 202
Queen's University
8:30 - 8:45 am Welcome
Policy Studies Room 202
Queen's University
8:30 - 8:45 am Welcome
Elia Zureik, GPD International Survey Lead Investigator
David Lyon, GPD Principal Investigator
8:45 - 10:15 am Methodological considerations
Session chair: David Lyon
Elia Zureik, Queen's University (GPD International Survey Lead Investigator)
Methodological and Conceptual Concerns in the Study of Privacy
L. Lynda Harling Stalker, Queen's University
Every word counts: The questionnaire construction
Andrey Pavlov, Queen's University
Comparability in Meaning Cross-Cultural Comparisons
10:15 - 10:30 am BREAK
10:30 - 12 noon Conceptualising privacy
Session chair: Jane Webster, Queen's School of Business
Elia Zureik, Queen's University (GPD International Survey Lead Investigator)
Racial Profiling: Cross-National Analysis
12:00 - 1:00 pm LUNCH
1:00 - 2:30 pm Consumers
Session chair: Martin Hand, Queen's Department of Sociology
2:45 - 4:15 pm Workers
Session chair: Art Cockfield, Queen's Faculty of Law
Yolande Chan, Queen's University
Managing privacy and security in the marketplace
L. Lynda Harling Stalker, Queen's University
Precarious workers: How do the most vulnerable workers in Canada view their privacy?
Avner Levin, Ryerson University
Is there a global approach to workplace privacy?
4:30 pm - 6:00 pm RECEPTION - Policy Studies Room 202
6:00 pm DINNER - Pan Chancho, 44 Princess Street
Policy Studies Room 202
Queen's University
8:30 - 8:45 am Welcome back
Elia Zureik, Lead Co-investigator and Workshop Coordinator
8:45 - 10:15 am Citizens - Identity
Session chair: Laureen Snider, Queen's Department of Sociology
David Lyon, Queen's University
National ID card systems in public opinion: An international survey
Jeffery Roy, Dalhousie University
Privacy, Identity & Digital Policy: A Comparative Assessment of the United States, Spain & Canada
10:15 - 10:30 am BREAK
10:30 - 12 noon Country profiles (Americas)
Session chair: Mark Salter, University of Ottawa
Nelson Arteaga Botello, Autonomous University of the State of Mexico
Privacy and surveillance in Mexico and Brazil: A cross-national analysis
Francois Fournier, ICRM, Montreal
Canadians' trust in public and private sector institutions in relation to privacy and confidentiality issues
12:00 - 1:15 pm LUNCH
1:15 - 2:45 pm Country profiles
Session chair: Kathleen Greenaway, Queen's School of Business
2:45 - 3:00 pm Closing plenary
6:00 pm DINNER - Radisson Hotel, Fort Henry Room, 1 Johnson Street
Nelson Arteaga Botello, Autonomous University of the State of Mexico
Latin America has gone through an important transformation process throughout its various areas of social life. In the past twenty-five years, a significant metamorphosis of various social values has been observed. If the results of the World Values Survey are carefully studied, it is possible to observe changes in the dimensions in which values can be interpreted: on the one hand, the dimension which contrasts "traditional" and "secular" values, while on the other hand, the one which contrasts 'survival' and 'self expression' values. Therefore, if during the '80s Latin American societies seemed to show a tendency towards the consolidation of 'secular' and 'self expression' values, from the following decade on, particularly in countries such as Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Mexico and Brazil, they seemed to move on a spectrum of values marked by 'self expression' and 'traditional' values. In other words, Latin America is formed by a society which, in general terms, tends to place relatively large importance on the following aspects: work, obedience, family, the belief that "God is important", and lesser importance on politics. At the same time, these societies have more tolerance towards diversity, an expansion of interpersonal trust, a larger consideration of self-expression and more participation in decision-making at all levels, including politics. There is a clear tendency towards decreased support of 'obsessed' governments, and an acceptance of the fact that the State is not responsible for satisfying the necessities of all citizens.
Such movement must be taken into consideration in the analysis of the relationship between privacy and surveillance in certain countries in Latin America, where the relevance of these topics concur with the recent consolidation of their democratic institutions. The re-definition of new limits within the State, which for a long time was characterized by its constant intervention in the privacy of individuals, as well as in social groups in order to guarantee the prompt detection of any activity which could break the stability and social 'peace'. In this regard, the work intended to be done suggests the close study of how the relationship between privacy and surveillance in Mexico and Brazil -two countries with similar political contexts- is being defined, taking into account the confidence towards the government and control strategies, as well as the actions carried out by individuals concerning their personal information (which includes their experiences in regards to surveillance measures in public and private areas).
Our hypothesis is such relationships are triangulated by a certain political culture which serves as a matrix for individuals to use as support to build their privacy. In other words, considering that all these metaphors are approximate, political culture, in regards to topics related to trust, governance, authority and gender relationships, represent a layer which enables us to recognize the points of tension between privacy and surveillance. However, it is also a fact that such matrixes and layers depend on a series of objective types of support, such as income, access to certain levels of education, a steady job or certain information technology and the capacity of consumer society, which regularly allows us to realize up to what point different social sectors create various relationship processes between privacy and surveillance. In this sense, the work aims to determine, in the particular case of Mexico and Brazil, if the relationship between privacy and surveillance results in similarities (or not), given the range of values which they share, or if it depends on objective types of support which serve as a matrix for the social construction of privacy in each of these countries.
Biography of Nelson Arteaga Botello
Nelson Arteaga Botello received his PhD at the University of Alicante, Spain. He is a member of the SNI (National System of Investigators in México). His main research interests are problematization fields and "dispositifs" through violence, public security and poverty. He has recently published Violencia y populismo punitivo en México, Globalización y violencia and Pobres y Delincuentes: estudio de sociologÃÂa y genealogÃÂa.
Yolande Chan, Professor & E. Marie Shantz Research Fellow in MIS, and Director of the Monieson Centre, Queen's School of Business
My paper will use survey data on employees and customers to:
a) examine privacy-related awareness, behaviours and concerns and
b) highlight related management implications.
The goal is to help managers better understand their employees and customers, and identify steps to take to allay concerns, and prevent privacy and security mishaps.
I will integrate the survey data with other empirical data I have been gathering (e.g., ISPI news clips that show employee and customer reactions to various privacy and security breaches) to create a Privacy and Security Management Model. I will use business ethics and stakeholder theory as the foundation for this model.
Canadian and USA data will be used.
Yolande E. Chan is Professor and E. Marie Shantz Research Fellow in MIS at Queen's University in Canada. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Western Ontario, an M.Phil. in Management Studies from Oxford University, and S.M. and S.B. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT. Prior to joining Queen's, she worked with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). Currently she serves as Director, The Monieson Centre. Dr. Chan conducts research on information privacy, knowledge management, strategic alignment, and information systems performance. She has published her findings in journals such as Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly Executive, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Information & Management, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Communications of the AIS and The Academy of Management Executive. Dr. Chan is a member of several journal editorial boards and is an officer of the Association for Information Systems.
Francois Fournier, Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal
It is widely believed that citizens' trust in society's institutions is a critical component of a healthy democratic system. Many questions in the Globalization of Personal Data's international survey measure citizens' trust towards government and the private sector with respect to privacy, national security and individual rights. What do the answers to these questions tell us about citizens' trust or distrust?
This workshop presentation will focus exclusively on the Canadian data. But given Canada's political, cultural and linguistic diversity, the objective of the presentation is two-fold:
Biography of François Fournier
François Fournier undertook graduate studies in Political Science (M.A.) and Sociology (Ph.D.) at l'Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). For many years he was involved in a series of qualitative studies and has also collaborated with the Quebec Human Rights Commission, co-authoring an extensive study on the evolution of rights and freedoms twenty-five years after the adoption of the Quebec Charter. He is, since 2002, doing research at the Centre for Bioethics in Montreal, Quebec (Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal). His main research areas are health and information and communication technologies (co-author of The Networking of Health information: Handbook for the management of ethical and social questions). He has produced a report for The Surveillance Project: Public opinion in Quebec on privacy issues and protection of personal information (1994-2004). He is currently working, thanks to a grant from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, on actual or potential secondary uses of health information in the context of electronic health records implementation and expansion in Canada and elsewhere.
Fernando Galindo, University of Zaragoza, Spain
The project "Governance and regulatory estrategies in the knowledge society" (GOVERNANCE), financed by the Spanish Ministry of Science (SEJ2004-00747), elaborates on theories pertaining to democratic governability and technologies of information and communications (TIC). A basic reference for the construction of these theories is the knowledge that citizens have use of their own instruments of TIC, and the knowledge of the regulations that delimit this use. The knowledge that citizens have on the protection of personal data and biometric management holds special interest in as much as these norms are basic regulative instruments to make a safe use of these technologies that are respectful of the rights of the person.
The GOVERNANCE project is interested in the study of European opinions on the subject, and the comparison of these opinions with other countries. For this reason the sample selected by the authors of the Globalization of Personal Data International Survey is of special interest for the research.
The workshop paper will:
Biography of Fernando Galindo
From 1982 Professor Titular of Philosophy of Law, University of Zaragoza, Spain. From 1984 he was responsible for research and advice for Public Administration, Judicial Power and Industry on "Law and Computers". President of the "Association for the Promotion of the Information Technologies and the Electronic Commerce" (APTICE). APTICE is a non-profit association that has created a Stamp of Guarantee of the Electronic Commerce and Electronic Government (AGACE). From 1999 he was coordinator of the Network "Legal framework for the information society" (LEFIS: www.lefis.org), supported by the European Union, Socrates Programme. He is the author of more than 135 publications and editor and co-editor of the following books: Advances in Electronic Government (2000), E-Government: Legal, Technical and Pedagogical Aspects (2003), Electronic Government (Special Issue of the International Review of Law Computers & Technology, 2004) and Gobierno, derecho y tecnologÃÂa: las actividades de los poderes públicos (forthcoming 2006).
Andrew Grenville, IPSOS Canada
Does knowledge of surveillance technologies breed resistance or cynicism? Does a feeling of control over the flow of one's personal information stem from ignorance or knowledge of risks? Not everyone reacts to these issues the same way. But are there patterns? Are there different schools of thoughts on these issues? Do they vary from nation to nation?
In this paper we attempt to provide some answers to these questions by identifying schools of thought based on what the data tells us about peoples:
We identified segments or schools of thought based on how people answered questions on these topics, using a k-means clustering algorithm. This type of analysis uses peoples' patterns of response to questions measuring these themes to identify and define the segments.
After comparing and testing many alternatives, a three segment solution was found to be the most meaningful and reliable. We have provisionally named these segments: Informed Resisters (26% of total sample); the Status Quo Satisfied (41%); and Alienated Sceptics (33%). The size of each segment in the population varies greatly from country to country, revealing something about the character of the nation.
Informed Resisters do not trust either government or corporations to protect their information. They are relatively knowledgeable about surveillance technology and are more likely to be aware their privacy has been invaded. They, therefore, are actively engaged in avoiding surveillance and controlling their flow of their personal data. Larger proportions of the more educated population of the US, Canada and France are Informed Resisters.
Alienated Sceptics also do not trust that government or private companies will use their private information appropriately. They also lack a sense of control over their information. And they do not much knowledge of surveillance technology. In the face of this, they seem to have largely given up hope of being able to have control over their information and are not active in resistance. Many poorer Brazilians and Mexicans are Alienated Sceptics.
The Status Quo Satisfied are more trusting that business and government will protect their personal information. Somewhat knowledgeable and somewhat resistant, with a sense of control over their privacy, they are the least concerned about sharing their personal information. The Status Quo Satisfied are found in larger numbers in Hungary, Canada and Spain.
This paper will describe these segments, discuss how and why they have arrived at this mindset and consider implications for users and abusers of private information, as well as privacy advocates.
Biography of Andrew Grenville
Andrew Grenville is a senior vice president of Ipsos, the third largest survey research firm in the world, and the company that conducted the GPD international surveillance and privacy opinion research study. Andrew has 20 years experience in survey research and has conducted hundreds of studies in over 40 countries around the globe. He has a special interest in segmentation, having identified different schools of thought on everything from urinary difficulties to experiences of the supernatural. Andrew had the privilege of collaborating with David Lyon on a study entitled "God and Society in North America", in 1996.
L. Lynda Harling Stalker, Postdoctoral fellow, Globalization of Personal Data Project
This paper sets out to take you through the eight-month process of writing an international survey. We will talk about the importance of semantics when dealing with abstract and potentially personal concepts such as privacy and surveillance, selecting themes and topics, and the nuances of language that are critical to keep in mind when translation is involved. Finally, we will end up looking at the finished survey instrument to see how and why all this came together in its final form.
L. Lynda Harling Stalker, Postdoctoral fellow, Globalization of Personal Data Project
Precarious workers are the most vulnerable in the Canadian workforce. They include the part-time workers, the self-employed and, arguably, homemakers. This paper will look at how precarious Canadian workers in the GPD survey view their privacy. With work being a key contributor to identity construction, how does work affect perceptions of control and government protection of private information? By dividing the sample into precarious workers and full-time workers I anticipate seeing how this plays out. It is my contention that precarious workers will view themselves as having less control over their personal information, and see that government does little to protect them, as is arguably the case of their employment relations.
Over the past couple of decades, globalisation of markets and neo-liberal agendas have brought about a transformation to the modes of work. Where once Standard Employment Relations (SER) meant that most workers had permanent full-time employment with benefits, we now see an increase of people employed in non-standard relations. Harvey Krahn (1991) pointed out that one could broadly categorise non-standard employment into four categories: part-time employment, temporary employment, own-account self-employment, and multiple job holding. Cranford et al.(2005) suggest that we need to look beyond this to see that precarious labour not only has to do with the form which the employment takes but also the quality of the jobs. They cite Rodgers' (1989) dimensions: certainty of employment continuing, control over work process, regulatory protection, and income level.
Discussions about privacy as it relates to work have overlooked the precarious worker. With the exception of some studies on telecommuting (which may or may not be a precarious work situation), I believe that understanding how precarious workers view their privacy would contribute to the discussions around the quality of precarious jobs. This would be particularly pertinent to Rodgers' second and third dimensions. Control over the work environment arguably includes being able to control dimensions of your privacy. It would also be important to know how these workers view the protection of their privacy from the government. If they feel that there is little regulatory protection than it might contribute to the 'precariousness' of their work.
Biography of L. Lynda Harling Stalker
L. Lynda Harling Stalker received her PhD from Carleton University and is a post-doctoral fellow with the Globalization of Personal Data project at Queen's University, Kingston. She has written on the many concerns that affect self-employed workers in peripheral regions.
Avner Levin, Ryerson University
There are currently two main conceptual approaches to privacy in the workplace, a property-focused approach, and a rights-based approach. The property approach focuses on the fact that employers own the workplace and the resources that employees often use for private purposes such as computers and telephones. According to this approach, employers are free to dictate to employees the manner in which such resources will be used and employees only have privacy rights, or more accurately expectations of privacy, to the extent that employer policies allow. The rights approach focuses on the dignity and right to private life that is afforded every human being. Such rights can be balanced against other interests in the workplace, but never be fully ignored. Employees are entitled therefore to some minimal standard of dignity, privacy and a private life even while working and while using workplace resources, similar to their entitlement to other minimal standards such as minimum wages and health and safety standards.
Although not constructed specifically for the examination of these approaches the Globalization of Personal Data (GPD) Project at Queen's University provides cross-jurisdictional data which can be analyzed to determine whether one of these approaches is prevalent within each of the jurisdictions included within the project, and whether there exists a global approach to privacy in the workplace. The results of this analysis can then be compared with qualitative information, in the form of case law, statute and labour arbitration decisions, which exists with respect to the countries surveyed.1
Based on this qualitative information, the hypotheses that will be examined in this paper are as follows:
In order to examine these hypotheses this paper will analyze the answers to questions 21 and 22 of the survey conducted by the GPD project, across all the jurisdictions surveyed (Canada, US, Brazil, Mexico, China, Japan, France, Hungary and Spain). For both questions, responses coded 1 or 2 will be taken to support the property approach. Answers coded 3 or 4 will be taken to support the rights approach. Answers coded 9 will be discarded. The paper will then discuss the results of the analysis and the degree of their significance in light of the societal, cultural and political differences that exist worldwide.
1 Avner Levin, Dignity in the Workplace: An Inquiry into the Conceptual Foundation of Workplace Privacy Protection Worldwide (working paper).
Biography of Avner Levin
Avner Levin (BSc, LLB, LLM, SJD) is the Law Area Coordinator at Ryerson University's Faculty of Business. Professor Levin researches the legal regulation and protection of privacy and personal information in various sectors across jurisdictions, both within Canada and internationally. Most recently Professor Levin has focused on privacy in the workplace. Professor Levin heads the workplace privacy project at Ryerson University, which has been funded by the Federal Privacy Commissioner Contribution Program. A report on the project, titled "Under the Radar: The Employer Perspective on Workplace Privacy" was published earlier this year, and will be discussed at a workshop to be held at Ryerson University later this fall.
Guo Liang, Chinese Academy of the Social Sciences
'Privacy' is quite a new concept in China, and the meaning of this newly-translated concept is slightly different from the Western one.
Under the patriarchal system, the individual can barely find his/her place, let alone privacy. Yet since the economic reformation and social transformation, privacy is becoming an issue in China. The presentation will discuss the history and culture of privacy in China. I will describe the survey methodology and sample design, and discuss the findings and possible explanations.
Biography of Guo Liang
Guo Liang is the deputy director of the Centre for Social Development at the Chinese Academy of the Social Sciences (CASS) in Beijing, an Associate Professor of the Institute of Philosophy at CASS, and a member of the editorial board of Information Technologies and International Development at MIT Press. Guo completed his B.A. in Philosophy at the No.1 branch of Renmin University (1983), and received his M.A. in Philosophy from the Graduate School of CASS (1990). In 1995, Mr. Guo became interested in the Internet when he gave tutorials at the University of Oxford and started his own Bulletin Board System in Beijing as one of the first non-profit online services in China. He was a columnist from 1996 to 2000 for South Weekend, one of the leading newspapers in China, and an editor-in-chief of Internet Culture Series in which he published seven books (1997). Mr. Guo was elected by a leading IT-related newspaper Diannao Bao and the journal Xinzhoukan as one of the 'top ten Netizens' in China in 1998. Currently, Mr. Guo is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Annenberg Center for Communication, University of Southern California.
David Lyon, Queen's University
Of the ten* countries surveyed in the GPD international survey, Japan already has a smart, biometrics-based ID system in place, the USA and China have such systems currently under development, Hungary, Brazil, France and Spain have non-biometric IDs with no national database (though Spain and France are planning to upgrade), a smart national ID was recently rejected in Korea and Canada, and Mexico has no system in place at all, although US pressure may yet prevail for some national ID measure in Canada and an upgraded 'Border Crossing Card' or a matricula consular in Mexico. But what do citizens of these countries think of such ID systems and how do their responses relate to other factors such as age, gender, ethnicity and their specific historical, political and cultural context? In Canada, public opinion polling (for instance during the 2003 debates) indicated a high level of general acceptance of national ID cards (around two-thirds of those polled) but this was skewed by questions implying that personal benefit and protection would result from having ID cards. In the 2006 international survey, respondents were asked how far they agree with government-issued compulsory IDs and how safe they feel their personal data (on tax, gender, race and so on) would be in the national database. This paper takes an initial look at these data with a view to presenting some new findings that represent the interests and concerns of ordinary citizens in the countries surveyed.
*Ten countries are listed here although less may be surveyed in the end.
Biography of David Lyon
David Lyon is the Principal Investigator of the Globalization of Personal Data Project and the Director of the Surveillance Project. He is also Queen's Research Chair in Sociology. Professor Lyon has been working on surveillance issues since the 1980s, when he discussed surveillance as one of the key issues of information-based societies in The Information Society: Issues and Illusions (Polity 1988). Since then he has been involved in many debates over information politics and policy in Canada and around the world as a result of his research and publications including The Electronic Eye (1994), Surveillance Society (2001) and Surveillance after September 11 (Polity 2003). He is a founding editor of the e-journal Surveillance and Society and has particular research interests in national ID cards, aviation security and surveillance and in promoting the cross-disciplinary and international study of surveillance.
Stephen T. Margulis, Grand Valley State University
My proposed paper draws on Westin's privacy types. According to Westin (Journal of Social Issues, 2003, p. 434, 445), the privacy fundamentalists assign primary value to privacy claims, rejects consumer-benefit and societal-protection claims for personal data uses, have high organizational distrust, and advocate comprehensive legal intervention. The privacy unconcerned position views privacy claims as a somewhat less worthy than business efficiency and societal-protection/governmental interests in personal information use, is generally trustful of organizations, and opposes most new legal interventions as unnecessary and costly. The privacy pragmatists value privacy strongly but seek tailored legal interventions that address demonstrated abuses, along with voluntary organizational interventions intended to promote individual choice privacy. Westin (2003, p. 438) also reports that the higher the person's "trust in government and voting and their attitudes toward business and technology," the less their (1) privacy concerns, (2) hostility toward business and government information practices, and (3) support for privacy-protection legislation.
The proposed paper is predicated on successfully identifying, using items in the GPD project interview schedule, Westin's three types (better, types similar to Westin's) in the U.S. and Canadian samples. I am limiting myself to these two nations because, based on the tables in the background report and personal experience, they are the most similar of the nations in the GPD study. 'Successfully' means there are sufficient numbers of respondents for the types to allow me to examine if, as Westin contends, the profiles are associated with differential attitudes, beliefs, and reported behaviors about the uses and perceived abuses of private personal information. My secondary focus is to examine the demographic correlates of each type/profile. Insufficient cell sizes for the principal profiles would preclude additional analysis.
Biography of Stephen Margulis
Dr. Stephen (Steve) Margulis is currently Professor of Management, Seidman College of Business, Grand Valley State University (GVSU), in Grand Rapids, Michigan, U.S.A. Before this appointment he was the Eugene Eppinger Professor of Facilities Management at GVSU. He has been publishing on behavioral aspects of privacy for some 30 years. His most recent privacy publication is "Contemporary perspectives on privacy: Social, psychological, political." Journal of Social Issues, 2003, 59 (2), which he developed and edited and to which he contributed two articles, one on Alan Westin, the focus of the research he will present at the GPD project conference. His favorite privacy publication is "Privacy as a behavioral phenomenon." Journal of Social Issues, 1977, 33(3), to which he also developed, edited, and contributed. In addition to university teaching and research, he worked for 10 years for the U.S. federal government at a premier federal research laboratory, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, followed by work in the private sector, as Director of Research, at BOSTI, an environmental design research and consulting firm in Buffalo, New York.
Stephen Marmura, Postdoctoral fellow, Globalization of Personal Data Project
The international survey includes questions designed to measure public perceptions regarding the media's attention to terrorism on the one hand vs. violations of citizens' privacy rights by the government and/or corporations on the other. It also addresses public perceptions about the media's coverage of information privacy issues more generally. Other questions attempt to assess the level of public trust in government with respect to its surveillance of citizens. When taken together, and considered in conjunction with credible evidence obtained elsewhere, the relevant survey findings appear to indicate that while Americans have become more worried about the 'intrusive' nature of state surveillance practices, such concerns continue to be overshadowed by fears about terrorism and a desire for greater security. To better appreciate the evolution and character of public attitudes on these matters, the survey results are considered in light of the following: other polls and studies dealing with relevant public attitudes; America's dual character as both a security state and sole global superpower; relevant media and propaganda issues (theory and precedents). Evidence suggests both that large segments if not a majority of the American public will likely continue to signal acceptance for surveillance measures ostensibly implemented by the state to guard against terrorist threats, and that the mass media will continue to play a significant role in encouraging such acceptance.
Biography of Stephen Marmura
Stephen received his PhD in sociology from Queen's University in 2004. He specializes in the area of communication and information technology (CIT). His research dissertation entailed an empirical and theoretical investigation into the ways in which Internet technology has been exploited by various groups and interests to advance their political agendas. As GPD Postdoctoral Fellow, he was initially involved in the location technologies research cluster, and is currently involved with surveillance issues in the mass media.
Andrey Pavlov, PhD candidate, Queen's Department of Math and Stats
The measurement of abstract concepts, such as personal efficacy and privacy, in a cross-cultural context poses problems of comparability in meaning, i.e. that the same concept could be understood differently by individuals with differing cultural background. While this is not a new problem, as comparative quantitative research attests, a novel solution has been recently suggested by a group of researchers working from Harvard. Led by Gary King, a political scientist, the group developed a modeling technique to be used in parametric data in order to correct for the problem of comparability. Respondents are asked to assess their personal stance with regard to the concept at hand, and compare this assessment to a hypothetical situation involving the same concept as depicted in a series of vignettes. Unlike self-assessment, the vignettes provide an invariant tool against which to rank the respondent's self-assessment, and at the same time provides us with means of comparing the rankings among respondents in the sample. Depending on the results, it is then possible to recode the responses and correct for incomparability in meaning. The paper will explore the use of this technique in our GPD International Survey. Two sets of vignettes were used, one deals with individual control of personal information, and the second with the extent to which privacy is respected in international travel.
Biography of Andrey Pavlov
Andrey Pavolv is a PhD candidate in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Queen's University. His first degree was from St. Petersburg state University with honours, majoring in probability and statistics. Since 2004 he has been pursuing graduate studies in statistics at Queen's University where he received his MA in 2005. Andrey has been acting as a statistical consultant to the GPD project.
Jason Pridmore, PhD Candidate, Dept of Sociology, Queen's University
Information on consumers is increasingly sought in a variety of forms for the purposes of improving corporate productivity and profitability. The intensification of consumer surveillance is part of the 'customer centric' marketplace in which corporations seek to digitally encode the desires, preferences, locations, lifestyles, and transaction histories of their customers to better serve and market to current and potential clientele. Though consumers are increasingly aware of and concerned about corporate gathering of their personal information, they continue to participate in programs designed to extract this information.
Several questions in the International Survey are directed specifically at consumer surveillance and privacy. This paper aims to discuss the underlying factors behind the survey responses to consumer surveillance practices in the Canadian and American contexts. Using research on loyalty cards and consumer profiling practices, and drawing on focus groups in Canada and the United States conducted prior to the survey deployment, this paper intends to connect the motivations, expectations, and attitudes of consumers toward their surveillance with the survey responses. The paper proposes that while consumers are both cognizant and wary of increased consumer surveillance practices, they willingly submit to these forms of scrutiny because they feel they will remain either unaffected or only positively affected by their participation. Advantages for participation in programs deemed trustworthy (by the consumer) are seen to negate the potential social concerns the consumers may have about relinquishing their personal data. In large measure, consumers see themselves as more savvy than the surveillance programs designed to track and profile their consumptive behaviours. They remain unconcerned about effects this information may have on how they are marketed to and how this may effect customer service levels.
Jeffrey Roy, School of Public Administration, Dalhousie University
The purpose of this proposed paper is to examine the nexus between privacy, identity, and the digital policies and governance initiatives of governments in three different national jurisdictions included in the international public opinion survey on surveillance and privacy: Spain, the US, and Canada. In framing such an undertaking, selecting Spain and the US is useful on two fronts (beyond this direct two country comparison): first, it allows for a broader comparative consideration of North American and European dimensions to privacy and identity issues; and second, it enables Canada to be situated within these two national and continental perspectives.
The guiding premises underpinning this proposed paper are two-fold: first that terrorist attacks in both Spain and in the US since (and including) 9-11 have bolstered public sector action aimed at stronger security measures that make use of new digital technologies in order to augment capacities for identity authentication and management; and second, that resulting privacy concerns, even if trumped by security, remain important political considerations in the countries in shaping government action.
These premises can be partly viewed as hypotheses to be tested and confirmed or modified by the survey data; however, somewhat general, they are also meant to serve as a platform for a more rigours, comparative case study-based examination of the two countries in order to dissect in particular the second premise above.
Key questions include:
i) in what ways does public opinion vary across both countries and why;
ii) how are these differences (if any) tied to the respective political systems (i.e. Parliamentary versus Presidential) and what are the implications for transparency and accountability; and
iii) how is each country reconciling its identity management structures across their respective models of political federalism.
Building on this comparison, the Canadian case can then be presented and considered accordingly in terms of the potential lessons from each country that carry influence or relevance for the Canadian experience. Moreover, Canada-US relations and continental governance dimensions to privacy and identity may also be contrasted with Europe.
Elements of the paper are derived from a recent framework that I developed for a book on e-government in Canada. The comparative dimensions to this paper, in addition to the international survey data, are also informed by having recently participated in a SSHRC-funded symposium on border management in Europe and North America hosted by the University of Victoria in December 2005, as well as a forthcoming paper on contrasting e-government and federalist systems co-authored with a Spanish colleague.
Jeffrey Roy is Associate Professor in the School of Public Administration, Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University. He specializes in models of democratic and multi-stakeholder governance and electronic government reforms and his research in these fields is presently funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Prior to joining Dalhousie he was Associate Professor in the School of Management, University of Ottawa. In 2004-2005, Professor Roy was a visiting faculty member of the School of Public Administration at the University of Victoria. He consults, presents, and provides executive development to organizations in both government and industry. He is also: Member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's E-Government Research Network; Associate editor of the International Journal of E-Government Research; featured columnist in CIO Government Review - a Canadian publication devoted to the nexus between technology and government; and author of a recent book, E-Government in Canada: Transformation for the Digital Age (University of Ottawa Press, 2006).
Emily Smith, Research Associate, Globalization of Personal Data Project
The prospect of introducing a national identity card has been debated in Canada several times. The idea received the greatest attention in the months following the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. The proposed introduction of a national identity card in 2002, required to be carried by all Canadians, sparked a national debate. Since that time, the program was set aside, due mainly to the enormous economic burden that the system would create, as well as privacy concerns. However, with increasing pressure from the US to introduce a national identity policy, the issue has received renewed attention and there is now a sense of inevitability over the introduction of a Canadian ID card. This paper will examine the role that public opinion polls on the topic have played within the debates.
The first section of this paper will outline the status of national identity policy in Canada. This will be followed by an analysis of previous Canadian public opinion polls on national ID cards. Focus will be placed on the context of the debates around the issues addressed as well as the government and business interests involved in the collection of this polling data and the influence it has had on national ID card policy. The final section of the paper will address the GPD survey and the results from the national ID card questions in Canada. In particular, questions 9 and 10 will be examined, along with the impacts that the demographic variables such as age, gender, ethnicity, education, and employment have on responses to these questions (40-47).
Biography of Emily Smith
Emily Smith is Research Associate at The Surveillance Project. She holds a M.A. in sociology from Queen's University. She is also Editorial Assistant for the online journal Surveillance and Society.
Ola Svenonius, Berlin
The paper directs its attention to findings of the GDP privacy survey in Europe with focus on consumers and differences in institutional regulatory frameworks. The basic question that is asked is: Is the level of privacy infringement in each respective country reflected in the answers by the public?
Brief description of the problem:
Citizens of the European Union are all confronted with the same basic legislation in regard to information privacy and some basic consumer rights, which makes the question of 'surrounding' (meaning thematically close to) regulations more decisive for what consumers can expect in the respective countries. A major question in this context is: How far reaching is the consumer protection legislation in the three surveyed countries and what position is assigned to the citizen in his/her role as a consumer? Further, what status is assigned to ethical issues in the private sector regarding information collection schemes?
The East-West thesis from project Urbaneye (Hempel/Töpfer 2002) is explored in this context. It states that after the fall of the iron curtain a fitting-in process in Eastern Europe occurred, which set the Western Society as an ideal to work towards. In this process, surveillance technologies and consequently also privacy limitations are thought to have been accepted more or less without criticism because they would open the door to the west. The thesis is highly relevant for consumers, as they are the ones who are targeted by these schemes.
However, the paper takes a critical stand towards the East-West thesis because it is assumed to be too simplistic and potentially relevant for CCTV surveillance only, whereas information privacy in the context of Internet consumption may not enjoy the same acceptance. Even if people in Eastern European countries tend to accept privacy limitations more, a compromising factor is assumed to be lower internet usage rates in those countries, which means that consumers are not as exposed to privacy infringements in Eastern Europe as in Western Europe.
Taking these questions as one part of the analysis, the paper moves on to contrast the results with the answers to the survey from Spain, France and Hungary. What do the populations in those countries think about their own situation and are there discrepancies to earlier analyses? Do the answers given in the survey reflect a greater acceptance towards privacy infringements in Eastern than in Western Europe?
The paper will be based on the GDP international privacy survey and additional expert interviews as well as results of earlier research projects.
The areas that would be covered from the questionnaire would be:
Ola Svenonius was born 1979 and has a masters degree in Political Science from Södertörns University College in Stockholm, where he lived until 2004. He has studied Political Science, Economics, German and Philosophy in Stockholm, Bonn, Östersund and Berlin. Since 2005, he has been a researcher and research assistant at the Centre for Technology and Society and the Nexus Institute at the Berlin Technical University. He has participated in several research projects focusing on surveillance and social control, public transport and consumer issues. He is currently initiating a PhD project which aims to analyse surveillance in local transport systems in the Baltic Sea Region.
Ivan Szekely, University of Budapest
This paper will focus on public opinion and attitudes regarding privacy - especially information privacy - in Hungary, extending the relevance of some hypotheses to other transitional societies in the new democracies of the Central and Eastern European region.
The first, until the present project, and only comprehensive survey gauging sensitivity to privacy in Hungary and the region was performed in 1989-1990, in the midst of the political transformation, and it provided a snapshot of a slackening regime of knowledge and attitudes solidified over the preceding decades. Among others, the survey included questions regarding data sensitivity, examples of invasion of (territorial, communication, information) privacy, trust in various data processing organizations, and included multivariate analyses in order to define background factors and attitudes.
In the first part, the paper will seek common points of reference in the two surveys, formulating observations regarding longitudinal changes and their possible interpretation. A remarkable result of the first survey was the discovery of a 'hidden' social stratum: 16% of the respondents were significantly more sensitive to privacy, uniformly in all aspects under survey; however, no difference could be detected in terms of social status or political affiliation explaining the discrepancy. Without knowing the actual data of the GPD survey, I am particularly interested whether such a uniformly sensitive sub-sample can be selected in the new survey, and if yes, what are the demographic and other characteristics of this sub-sample. (Similar iterations could be performed in data sets from other countries, too.)
In the second part some old and new characteristics affecting privacy in Hungary and the region will be briefly discussed. Hypotheses based on practical experience and theoretical research will be examined whether the new survey results validate and support these hypotheses, such as the high level of distrust of state and private data processors, the impact of the newly developed consumers' society on attitudes to privacy, or the low level of workplace privacy. Since Hungary in the late nineties became a sort of role model for the region in institutionalizing the protection of privacy, the empirical data need to be compared to this theoretical advantage. The author's hypothesis on the 'threshold of abstraction' will also be discussed in the light of the new survey results.
Finally, the paper will direct researchers' attention to a special group of actors in the privacy and surveillance scene as a potential research target, namely, information technologists. The attitudes of IT professionals towards information privacy seem to be different in the CEE region than, for example, in North America: in the new democracies these people seem to be the natural allies of the data processing monopolies, while in the US the popular image is closer to a sort of non-conformist genius, an informational Robin Hood. The attitudes of IT people - designers and operators of data processing systems - and their image in public opinion deserve further investigation.
Biography of Dr. Iván Székely
Dr. Iván Székely, social informatist, is an internationally known expert in the multidisciplinary fields of data protection and freedom of information. A long-time independent researcher, consultant and university lecturer, former chief counsellor of the Hungarian Parliamentary Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, Székely is at present Counsellor of the Open Society Archives at Central European University and associate professor at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. A founder of the newly democratic informational-legal system and the introducer of data protection auditing in Hungary, Székely was a leader of the first privacy and data protection research in Hungary and in the region (1989-90).
Elia Zureik, Queen's University
Knowledge about and experience with surveillance and monitoring technologies is considered in the literature to be a good predictor of attitudes to technology in general and to privacy/surveillance in particular. The paper will focus on several items in the survey dealing with profiling at airports and the right of governments to collect and share personal information with third parties. The answers to these questions will be correlated with the respondents' experience at airports, and knowledge about various monitoring technologies. Cross-cultural variations will be used as explanatory variables, as well as the impact of relevant demographic variables (including frequency of travel).
Biography of Elia Zureik
Elia Zureik is an Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Queen's University. His published work in ICT includes journal articles dealing with consumer behaviour (2005), biometrics and governance (2203), computer crime (1990), and trade union response to ICT deregulation in the telephone industry (1988), He is the co-editor of Global Surveillance and Policing: Borders, Security and Identity (2005), Computers, Surveillance and Privacy (1996), and The Social Context of Information and Communication Technology: A Bibliography (1987). He recently completed a study on nation-building and the use of the Internet in Palestine, funded by the Canadian International Development Research Centre.
David Zweig, University of Toronto; Ana Ortiz de Guinea and Jane Webster, Queen's University
We propose conducting an exploratory examination to determine if privacy expectations change depending on the context (e.g., worker vs. consumer vs. traveller). To do this, we are going to explore differences in perceptions of privacy, controlling for knowledge and previous experiences. If differences are discovered, we will examine the qualitative data to search for potential reasons why privacy perceptions might be fluid rather than static across contexts.
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The Surveillance Studies Centre
c/o David Murakami Wood
Department of Criminology
University of Ottawa
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