I frequently use this column to rail against threats to the privacy of Internet users, both from government and the private sector. I just found a survey published late last year by the Pew Internet & American Life Project that reports that people are coming to support, or at last not object too strongly to, some types of spying.
The report is titled "Digital Footprints: Online identity management and search in the age of transparency." The summary of the findings section of the report includes the survey results that 60 per cent of Internet users (or at least the survey respondents) find information about themselves online, 60 per cent (maybe not the same 60 per cent) are not concerned with the amount of information out there and half of teens and a much smaller percentage of adults have posted profiles to Internet social sites (most teens do restrict access to their profile in some way). But, to me some of the more interesting results did not make it into the summary.
I found the section on "The Changing Nature of Personal Information" a bit surprising and somewhat depressing. For example, a 1994 Harris Interactive survey found that 65 per cent of Americans said it was "extremely important" that they not be monitored at work; the current survey, using a similar question, finds that this has dropped to 28 per cent. At the same time another Pew survey found that 85 per cent of adults feel that it is "very important" that they be able to control who will get information about them, and almost 60 per cent have refused to provide some information when they thought that it was not needed or was too personal. The report has a good discussion of the kind of digital footprints each of us leave behind as we wander through the Internet. But the discussion misses the vast database that Google, Yahoo etc have on each of us and only focuses on the info that pops up when you do a Google search. People seem willing to let their boss watch over their shoulder and do not notice (or at least Pew did not ask about) the data Google et al are compiling about our every whim, yet people feel it's important to have a sense of control. A mixed message at best.
