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

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Book cover Data Protection on the Move

Part of the book series: Law, Governance and Technology Series ((ISDP,volume 24))

Abstract

This paper considers the relationship between privacy and security and, in particular, the traditional “trade-off” paradigm that argues that citizens might be willing to sacrifice some privacy for more security. Academics have long argued against the trade-off paradigm, but these arguments have often fallen on deaf ears. Based on data gathered in a pan-European survey we discuss which factors determine citizens’ perceptions of concrete security technologies and surveillance practices.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Vincenzo Pavone and Sara Degli Esposti, “Public Assessment of New Surveillance-Oriented Security Technologies: Beyond the Trade-Off between Privacy and Security,” Public Understanding of Science 21, no. 5 (2012). Daniel J. Solove, Understanding Privacy (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2008).

  2. 2.

    Reinhard Kreissl et al., “Surveillance: Preventing and Detecting Crime and Terrorism,” in Surveillance in Europe, ed. David Wright and Reinhard Kreissl (London, New York: Routledge, 2015).

  3. 3.

    E.g. in the context of environmentalism consumers often state a high importance of environmental protection that is not reflect in their actual behaviour. See Anja Kollmuss and Julian Agyeman, “Mind the Gap: Why Do People Act Environmentally and What Are the Barriers to Pro-Environmental Behavior?” Environmental Education Research 8, no. 3 (2002).

  4. 4.

    One of the most successful (and most criticized) application of TPB is the so-called “Technology Acceptance Model” and its extension, the “Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology”, which simplifies the TPB approach by eliminating the direct consideration of attitudes because they are difficult or impossible to measure. They are very popular methods in computer science assess the acceptance of human computer interface designs. Cf. Viswanath Venkatesh et al., “User Acceptance of Information Technology: Toward a Unified View,” MIS Quarterly 27, no. 3 (2003); Fred D. Davis, “Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, and User Acceptance of Information Technology,” ibid.13 (1989).

  5. 5.

    Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method [1895], trans. Steven Lakes (New York et al.: The Free Press, 1982).

  6. 6.

    Cf. for instance Andrew J. Cook, Kevin Moore, and Gary D. Steel, “Taking a Position: A Reinterpretation of the Theory of Planned Behaviour,” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 35, no. 2 (2005).

  7. 7.

    Icek Ajzen and Martin Fishbein, “The Influence of Attitudes on Behavior,” in The Handbook of Attitudes, ed. Dolores Albarracin, Blair T. Johnson, and Mark P. Zanna (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2005).

  8. 8.

    Debbie V. S. Kasper, “The Evolution (or Devolution) of Privacy,” Sociological Forum 20, no. 1 (2005); Solove, Understanding Privacy.

  9. 9.

    Roger Clarke, “Introduction to Dataveillance and Information Privacy, and Definitions of Terms,” Xamax Consultancy.

  10. 10.

    Rachel L. Finn, David Wright, and Michael Friedewald, “Seven Types of Privacy,” in European Data Protection: Coming of Age, ed. Serge Gutwirth, et al. (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013)., p. 7–9.

  11. 11.

    Clarke, “Introduction to Dataveillance and Information Privacy, and Definitions of Terms”.

  12. 12.

    Michael Friedewald et al., “Privacy and Security Perceptions of European Citizens: A Test of the Trade-Off Model,” in Privacy and Identity 2014, IFIP AICT, Vol. 457, ed. Jan Camenisch, Simone Fischer-Hübner, and Marit Hansen (Heidelberg, Berlin: Springer, 2015).

  13. 13.

    David J. Brooks, “What Is Security: Definition through Knowledge Categorization,” Security Journal 23, no. 3 (2009).

  14. 14.

    Robert J. Fischer and Gion Green, Introduction to Security, 7th ed. (Amsterdam, Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2004).

  15. 15.

    European Committee on Standardisation (CEN), BT/WG 161, cited in Carlos Martí Sempere, “The European Security Industry: A Research Agenda,” (Berlin: German Institute for Economic Research, 2010).

  16. 16.

    Monica Lagazio, “The Evolution of the Concept of Security,” The Thinker, September 2012.

  17. 17.

    Friedewald et al., “Privacy and Security Perceptions of European Citizens: A Test of the Trade-Off Model.”.

  18. 18.

    Andrey Pavlov, “Application of the Vignette Approach to Analyzing Cross-Cultural Incompatibilities in Attitudes to Privacy of Personal Data and Security Checks at Airports,” in Surveillance, Privacy, and the Globalization of Personal Information: International Comparisons, ed. Elia Zureik, et al. (Montreal, Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010). Gary King and Jonathan Wand, “Comparing Incomparable Survey Responses: Evaluating and Selecting Anchoring Vignettes” Political Analysis 15 (2007).

  19. 19.

    Carolina Haita and Daniel Cameron, “Privacy or Security: A False Choice? European Citizens’ Perceptions of Privacy, Personal Data, Surveillance and Security,” Understanding Society (2014).

  20. 20.

    Croatia had not acceded to the EU at the time of the project planning.

  21. 21.

    For those vignettes with alternative wording the sample was halved again to 6800 responses in total or 250 responses per country.

  22. 22.

    Friedewald et al., “Privacy and Security Perceptions of European Citizens: A Test of the Trade-Off Model.”

  23. 23.

    To measure “privacy activism” we asked citizens if they had actively taken steps to protect their personal information. Answer categories included: refuse to give information, ask company to delete information, ask company not to disclose information, deliberatively give incorrect information etc. Citizens who answered they had taken at least two of the given possibilities were considered as “privacy active”.

  24. 24.

    Some of these items are, however, themselves determined by basic control variables (e.g. age or education level).

  25. 25.

    Consequently the respective cells in the table are empty (n/a).

  26. 26.

    More details on methodology can be found in Michael Friedewald et al., “Report on the Analysis of Survey Results,” (2015).

  27. 27.

    The importance of trust (or distrust) has been a familiar factor in explaining privacy attitudes since the earliest surveys by Alan Westin. See for instance: Susannah Fox et al., “Trust and Privacy Online: Why Americans Want to Rewrite the Rules,” (Washington, DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2001); Stephen T. Margulis, Jennifer A. Pope, and Aaron Lowen, “The Harris-Westin Index of General Concern About Privacy: An Exploratory Conceptual Replication,” in Surveillance, Privacy, and the Globalization of Personal Information: International Comparisons, ed. Elia Zureik, et al. (Montreal, Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010); Wainer Lusoli et al., Pan-European Survey of Practices, Attitudes and Policy Preferences as Regards Personal Identity Data Management, JRC Scientific and Policy Report EUR 25295 (Luxembourg: Publication Office of the European Union, 2012).

  28. 28.

    Timothy C. Earle and George Cvetkovich, Social Trust: Toward a Cosmopolitan Society (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1995).

  29. 29.

    Richard J. Bord and Robert E. O’Connor, “Determinants of Risk Perceptions of a Hazardous Waste Site,” Risk Analysis 12 (1992).

  30. 30.

    Mary Madden et al., “Teens, Social Media, and Privacy,” (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2013); Wainer Lusoli et al., “Young People and Emerging Digital Services: An Exploratory Survey on Motivations, Perceptions and Acceptance of Risks,” (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2009).

  31. 31.

    Vincenzo Pavone, Sara Degli Esposti, and Elvira Santiago, “Key Factors Affecting Public Acceptance and Acceptability of SOSTs,” (The SurPRISE consortium, 2015), p. 139. Iván Székely, “Changing Attitudes in a Changing Society? Information Privacy in Hungary, 1989–2006,” in Surveillance, Privacy, and the Globalization of Personal Information: International Comparisons, ed. Elia Zureik, et al. (Montreal, Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010).

  32. 32.

    Kristof Verfaillie et al., “Public Assessments of the Security/Privacy Trade-Off: A Criminological Conceptualization,” (PRISMS Project, 2013).

  33. 33.

    Kreissl et al., “Surveillance: Preventing and Detecting Crime and Terrorism.”

  34. 34.

    Baldo Blinkert, “Unsicherheitsbefindlichkeit als ‚sozialer Tatbestand’. Kriminalitätsfurcht und die Wahrnehmung von Sicherheit und Unsicherheit in Europa,” Monatsschrift für Kriminologie und Strafrechtsreform 93, no. 2 (2010); Fox et al., “Trust and Privacy Online: Why Americans Want to Rewrite the Rules.”; Dina Hummelsheim, “Subjektive Unsicherheit und Lebenszufriedenheit in Deutschland: Empirische Ergebnisse einer repräsentativen Bevölkerungsbefragung,” in Sichere Zeiten? Gesellschaftliche Dimensionen der Sicherheitsforschung, ed. Peter Zoche, Stefan Kaufmann, and Harald Arnold (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2015).

  35. 35.

    Pavone, Esposti, and Santiago, “Key Factors Affecting Public Acceptance and Acceptability of SOSTs,” p. 135–136.

  36. 36.

    Sunil Patil et al., “Public Perception of Security and Privacy: Results of the Comprehensive Analysis of PACT’s Pan-European Survey,” (Cambridge, UK: RAND Corporation, 2014), p. v.

  37. 37.

    SurPRISE also confirmed most these observations. Cf. Pavone, Esposti, and Santiago, “Key Factors Affecting Public Acceptance and Acceptability of SOSTs,” p. 154–155.

  38. 38.

    SurPRISE concludes “the more participants perceive SOSTs to be targeted at others rather than themselves, the more likely they are to find a SOST more acceptable”. Ibid., p. 138.

  39. 39.

    It is quite telling that in the most recent Eurobarometer study on Europeans’ attitudes towards security the focus is strongly on terrorism, cybercrime, organized crime and insecurity of the EU’s external borders trustworthiness of security agencies and their measures are not even mentioned. Cf. TNS Opinion & Social, “Europeans’ Attitudes Towards Security,” (Brussels, 2015).

  40. 40.

    Pavone, Esposti, and Santiago, “Key Factors Affecting Public Acceptance and Acceptability of SOSTs.”; Gregory Conti, Lisa Shay, and Woodrow Hartzog, “Deconstructing the Relationship between Privacy and Security,” IEEE Technology and Society Magazine 33, no. 2 (2014).

  41. 41.

    As the empirical basis PRISMS has defined a structural model that describes the relationship of the main constructs in greater detail. This will be a translation of the theory of planned behaviour into a survey based empirical model. Cf. Friedewald et al., “Report on the Analysis of Survey Results.”; Marc van Lieshout, Anne Fleur van Veenstra, and David Barnard-Wills, “The PRISMS Decision Support System,” (2015).

  42. 42.

    The most notable is maybe the European Union’s “Stockholm programme” that states “[t]he challenge will be to ensure respect for fundamental freedoms and integrity while guaranteeing security in Europe” European Council, “The Stockholm Programme—an Open and Secure Europe Serving and Protecting the Citizens,” Official Journal of the European Union, 4.5.2010 2010, p. 4.

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Acknowledgments

This work was carried out in the project “PRISMS: Privacy and Security Mirrors” co-funded from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement 285399. For more information see: http://prismsproject.eu

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, Breslauer Straße 48, 76139, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Michael Friedewald & Sven Rung

  2. Strategy and Policy Department, The Netherlands Organisation for Applied Science (TNO), Van Mourik Broekmanweg 6, 2628 XE, Delft, The Netherlands

    Marc van Lieshout & Merel Ooms

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  1. Michael Friedewald
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Correspondence to Michael Friedewald .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Law, Science, Technology and Society (LSTS), Faculty of Law and Criminology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

    Serge Gutwirth

  2. Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Ronald Leenes

  3. Law, Science, Technology and Society, Faculty of Law and Criminology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

    Paul De Hert

Appendix: The Vignettes

Appendix: The Vignettes

  1. 1.

    Foreign government surveillance

An international disaster relief charity has been sending a monthly newsletter by email to its supporters. The people who run the charity find out through the media that a foreign government has been regularly capturing large amounts of data on citizens of other countries by monitoring their emails. The foreign government says it needs to monitor some communications to help keep its citizens safe and that the main purpose is to focus on terrorism. The charity’s officials are unsure whether this means their supporters’ personal information is no longer confidential.

  1. 2.

    School access by biometrics

At a local primary school a new system for getting into the school has been installed. All pupils, teachers, parents, other family members and other visitors have to provide their fingerprints on an electronic pad to identify themselves in order to enter or leave the school.

  1. 3.

    Usage of smart meter data

A power company has decided to offer smart meters to all its consumers. Smart meters enable consumers to use energy more efficiently by allowing them to see how much they are using through a display unit. The data recorded by smart meters allows power companies to improve energy efficiency and charge lower costs. They also enable power companies to build up a more detailed picture of how their customers use energy. It also enables the companies to find out other things, like whether people are living at the address, or how many people are in the household.

  1. 4.

    Monitoring terrorist website visits

A student is doing some research on extremism and as part of his work he visits websites and online forums that contain terrorist propaganda. When his parents find out they immediately ask him to stop this type of online research because they are afraid security agencies such as the police or anti-terrorism bodies will find out what he has been doing and start to watch him.

  1. 5.

    Speed control in neighbourhoods by ANPR

Michael lives in a suburban neighbourhood, where his children like to play outside with their friends. However, his street is a short cut for commuters who drive faster than the speed limit. In response to complaints from residents, the local authority decides to install automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) systems, which identify and track all vehicles and calculate their average speed. This allows those who drive too fast to be prosecuted.

  1. 6.

    ISP Data

Companies offering services on the Internet want to sell information about [(a) your (b) their customers] Internet use to advertisers and other service providers so the information can be used to create more personal offers and deals. This would include the searches you conduct and the websites you visit. Your provider says the information they sell will be anonymous.

  1. 7.

    Use of DNA databases by police

James voluntarily provided a sample of his DNA to a company that carries out medical research. DNA contains the genetic pattern that is uniquely characteristic to each person. He then learns that the research company has been asked to disclose all their DNA samples to police for use in criminal investigations. Samples of DNA can be used to understand potential health problems but also to identify people and to make inferences about who they are related to.

  1. 8.

    Crowd surveillance by police

Version a “Demonstration”: Claire is an active member of an environmental group, and is taking part in a demonstration against the building of a new nuclear plant. The police monitor the crowd in various ways to track and identify individuals who cause trouble: they use uniformed and plain-clothes police, CCTV, helicopters and drones, phone tapping, and try to find people on social media.

Version b “Football”: David is a football fan who regularly attends home matches. The police monitor the crowd in various ways to track and identify individuals who cause trouble: through uniformed police and plain-clothes police, CCTV, by using helicopters and drones, tapping phones, and by trying to find people on social media.

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Friedewald, M., van Lieshout, M., Rung, S., Ooms, M. (2016). The Context-Dependence of Citizens’ Attitudes and Preferences Regarding Privacy and Security. In: Gutwirth, S., Leenes, R., De Hert, P. (eds) Data Protection on the Move. Law, Governance and Technology Series(), vol 24. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7376-8_3

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