Americans Value Privacy, Dislike Secret Surveillance, Data Collection Programs, Pew Survey Finds

Ninety-three percent of adults say it’s important that they control who can get information about them, said a survey released Wednesday from the Pew Research Center. The Jan. 27-Feb. 16 survey of 461 adults on a GfK panel found that “Americans feel privacy is important in their daily lives in a number of essential ways” but “have a pervasive sense that they are under surveillance when in public and very few feel they have a great deal of control over the data that is collected about them and how it is used,” Pew said. Eighty-eight percent of Americans said it's important that someone isn’t watching or listening to them without their permission. Americans have “exceedingly low levels of confidence in the privacy and security of the records that are maintained by a variety of institutions in the digital age,” Pew said. Six percent of respondents were very confident telcos would be able to protect their data, while 9 percent were very confident credit card companies would be able to protect their data. “While some Americans have taken modest steps to stem the tide of data collection, few have adopted advanced privacy-enhancing measures,” Pew said. A majority of Americans expect organizations, including government surveillance programs, to limit the time they retain records of their activities and communications, Pew said. It said that Americans find it important to “preserve the ability to be anonymous for certain online activities.”