Track me, track me not: Support and consent to state and private sector surveillance

Abstract

The current study examines consent to surveillance and identifies links between support for state surveillance and consent to surveillance by private entities. Contrary to a tendency in academic literature and public debates to consider private and state surveillance as a single phenomenon in terms of methods, magnitude, and practice, findings show that individuals distinguish between these two types of surveillance when it comes to compliance and consent. Support for state surveillance is much more widespread and does not correlate with consent to private sector surveillance. Furthermore, support and consent to surveillance are rather nuanced, with different factors predicting different types of surveillance, according to the justifications and contexts of surveillance methods: Private sector surveillance is predicted by the compensation offered to subjects, factors related to behavior in online social networks and age. With regard to state surveillance- support varies between surveillance as part of the war against terrorism, which is most common and predicted by political trust and support for other types of state surveillance, surveillance for security reasons which is predicted by age, political interest, political orientation and support for anti-terror surveillance, and surveillance in general- which is least common and predicted by religiosity, level of privacy settings in SNS, political trust and anti-terror surveillance.