SAN FRANCISCO – How Americans feel about the trade-offs between online privacy and security depends on what's been most recently in the news, polling by the non-partisan Pew Research Center finds.
In general, Americans are more concerned about security in the aftermath of terrorist attacks but more concerned about privacy rights when revelations are made about government surveillance.
“There’s been a tension about these issues almost since 9/11,” said Carroll Doherty,
Pew’s director of public research.
“This is the latest episode that exposes these tensions, where people worry about privacy and at the same time they worry about overreach by the government,” he said.
The issue is once again in the public eye as the FBI and Apple battle for public opinion over the agency’s demand that Apple help it unlock a smart phone used by one of the killers in the San Bernardino, Calif., massacre.
After the San Bernardino and Paris shootings, 56% of Americans were concerned U.S. anti-terror policies had not gone far enough to protect the country. That compared with 28% who were concerned the policies have gone too far in restricting civil liberties.
However, just after Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 the extent of U.S. surveillance of citizens and non-citizens alike, a Pew poll found 48% of Americans approved of the government’s collection of telephone and internet data as part of anti-terrorism efforts.
By January 2014, approval had declined to 40%.
Later that year 47% of Americans said anti-terror programs had gone too far in restricting civil liberties while only 35% said they hadn’t gone far enough.
The numbers come from several surveys Pew had done on the topic of security and privacy over the past 15 years.
One interesting note was that in an era of stark bipartisan splits, Democrats and Republicans have almost the same feelings on this particular case.
“The majority of both Republicans and Democrats say Apple should help the FBI unlock the iPhone. It’s 56% of Republicans and 55% of Democrats,” said Doherty.
The legal case currently in the news involved an iPhone 5C that belonged to Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the shooters in the San Bernardino massacre. It is owned by his employer, the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health.
The FBI believes the phone may be locked with a security feature that automatically deletes the cryptographic key necessary to un-encode it if ten failed passcode attempts are made.
U.S. Magistrate Judge, Sheri Pym ruled Feb. 16 that Apple must provide the FBI the means to overcome that particular security feature. That would allow the agency to make unlimited tries to guess the passcode and, if it succeeds, gain access to whatever is on the phone.
Apple has challenged the order.
Both Apple and the FBI have been making statements and posting open letters about the issue in the past week, in attempts to sway public opinion.
Long term, Americans appear to be becoming more concerned about their privacy and sharing of their personal data, Pew found. In 2013, a full 91% of adults believed consumers have lost control of how their personal information is collected and used by companies.
In 2015, Pew found that few Americans are very confident that records about them maintained by both public and private groups will remain private and secure.
