A presentation I gave in Paul Jones' class.
read more• “Americans’ Privacy Strategies Post-Snowden”, end of 2014. • Snowden’s biggest fear was people would forget • Report good for quantitative testing • Overall, clear that the more individuals knew/read, the more likely they were concerned and took action. ⁃ But this is bidirectional in cause, most likely. More you are concerned generally, more likely you are to read a lot about it. • 34% of those aware of the surveillance took at least one step to shield their info ⁃ 25% used more complex passwords ⁃ 19% changed privacy on social media ⁃ (most popular attempts also aren’t effective) • With regard to acceptable monitoring ⁃ 60% said it’s acceptable to monitor American leaders ⁃ 54% said acceptable for foreign citizens ⁃ Compared to 40% who believe in monitoring American citizens (high??) • One thing I didn’t know, whitehouse appointed board called Civil Liberties Oversight Board ⁃ Bulk surveillance did not help prevent attacks ⁃ Suggested ceasing all mass collection • Public is evenly split on the court system’s balance of public’s right to privacy and intelligence need ⁃ But these courts really were “yes” courts, as Snowden says. • 49% said okay to monitor person who uses encryption software to hide files ⁃ Interesting because expected that every business will do that to your information. • Between 10% and 20% changed the way they used email, search engines, social media, cell phones, texts, and apps. What I found really interesting: 10% use search engines that don’t track history 5% use privacy enhancing browser extesions 4% have adopted encryption for calls and texts 3% have used proxy servers 2% have used PGP 2% have used Tor 1% have use FireChat (locally networked). Both heavy and light internet users were equally likely to not know of these tools. Also, the top two popular ones do little. Especially the privacy enhancing browser extension which just prevents advertising tracking, for the most part. Of the respondents who had heard, 61% were less confident that the programs were serving the public interest.