Differentiating Conflicts in Beliefs vs. Value Trade-Offs in the Domestic Intelligence Policy Debate

Abstract

Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, there has been an increase in public discussion regarding US domestic intelligence activities. Domestic intelligence activities focus on gathering information about potential threats from individuals within the US, and completely rational members of the public can have different opinions about the acceptability of various alternatives depending on one’s values toward privacy, civil liberty, and security. Past studies have demonstrated that construction of a multi-objective value model can help clarify public values in controversial risk debates. This paper explores a range of domestic intelligence alternatives that vary on multiple objectives, and applies value-focused thinking to develop a multi-attribute utility model to evaluate and compare the alternatives. We demonstrate the feasibility of eliciting model parameters from individuals and provide a method for identifying the locus of possible disagreements among individuals. We first describe the development of the model, and then present insights found from participants who provided both value trade-offs and performance scores for six different domestic intelligence alternatives. We collected responses from two student groups and a group of police officers. We find differences among weights for an additive model for different stakeholder groups and differences among the performance scores. In particular, we find a “halo” effect for alternatives, such that its supporters ranked the alternative higher on all attributes compared to respondents who find the alternative unacceptable. Our modeling approach and results offer organizations such as the Department of Homeland Security insights into the debate surrounding new policy initiatives, particularly those requiring sensitive value tradeoffs.