Privacy Experts, Pollsters Surprised Voters Want Larger Government Role in Data Protection

Voters are 20 times more likely to be concerned about ID theft than they are about targeted ads, said in the survey, done Nov. 12-18 with more than 1,000 phone calls with registered voters from the 2012 presidential election or those who registered to vote in 2012. Eighty percent of voters are more worried about hacking and 16 percent more concerned about targeted ads, said the survey. Seventy-four percent of the respondents said the federal government needs to take more action to prevent identity theft, said the survey.

"That Americans are more concerned with hacking over tracking was not surprising,” said Diana Carew, director of Progressive Policy Institute’s Young American Prosperity Project. “Identity theft carries a significantly higher time and money cost than having customized ads follow you across the Internet.” The survey proved that consumers prefer to “pay for Internet content with their personal data than with money,” she said. “Most people are going to be more concerned about a threat that hits them right in the pocketbook,” said Joe Newman, legal and policy fellow at the Future of Privacy Forum. “Between the two dangers, hacking causes a much more immediate, more direct harm,” he said. “Tracking, on the other hand, is more of a philosophical concern.”

"The extent of the difference in how much more concerned Americans are about hacking” -- the report said 75 percent of respondents were worried about personal data versus 54 percent worried about tracked ads -- was “quite remarkable,” Carew said. She wondered whether younger people wouldn’t be “less concerned” about tracking.

Carew said Target’s data breach did not “affect online purchases -- that is, shopping in store is not necessarily safer than shopping online,” which she described as a “common misperception.” Forty million credit card accounts at Target were compromised in a data breach Thursday (WID Dec 20 p1).

Carew wouldn’t be “surprised to see significant legislative discussion about data security in 2014,” as well as “regulatory discussions at the FTC, FCC” and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, she said. How the legislative “conversation is framed” whether “commercial vs. government, innovation vs. protection, primary vs. third-party data broker, device or Internet provider vs. consumer, etc,” will be of interest, she said. “Any conversation will likely include data privacy and cybersecurity together since they are both addressing the same thing: protecting consumer, commercial, and government data."

The chances of a data security bill from Congress are “extremely slim, as Congress has its hands full with curbing NSA surveillance right now,” said Newman. “It’s very hard to draft data security laws that can keep up with modern technology."

The “public outcry” for the federal intervention to protect data privacy was “surprising,” said Newman. He cited another survey (http://bit.ly/1hrVxhl) which he said found that the “private sector is actually better able to handle cybersecurity issues than the federal government,” according to respondents.

It’s “very difficult” to find an issue where “three fourths of the country thinks the federal government needs to do more,” said Daniel Franklin, Benenson Strategy Group principal, who helped do the survey, in a conference call with reporters Wednesday. Data privacy is not set within an “ideological context,” but is a “pragmatic, personal safety” issue, he said.

"If Congress wants to understand what voters are saying,” the priority is “tracking down hackers that steal consumer data, rather than investigating the security practices of companies” that have their data hacked, said David Kanevsky, American Viewpoint research director, who helped do the survey. “If a store gets robbed, you don’t investigate the store because the security alarm was broken. You go after the criminals who stole the goods.”