Following Snowden around the World. International comparison of attitudes to Snowden’s revelations about the NSA/GCHQ

Date14 August 2017
Pages311-327
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/JICES-03-2017-0016
Published date14 August 2017
AuthorAndrew A. Adams,Kiyoshi Murata,Yasunori Fukuta,Yohko Orito,Ana María Lara Palma
Subject MatterInformation & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information & communications technology
Following Snowden around
the World
International comparison of attitudes to
Snowdens revelations about the NSA/GCHQ
Andrew A. Adams
Centre for Business Information Ethics, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan
Kiyoshi Murata and Yasunori Fukuta
School of Commerce, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan
Yohko Orito
Faculty of Collaborative Regional Innovation, Ehime University,
Matsuyama, Japan, and
Ana María Lara Palma
Department of Civil Engineering, Universidad de Burgos, Burgos, Spain
Abstract
Purpose A survey of the attitudes of students in eight countries towards the revelations of mass
surveillance by the USNSA and the UKs GCHQ has been described in an introductory paper and seven
country-specic papers (The Peoples Republic of China and Taiwan are combined in a single paper). This
paper aims to present a comparison of the results from these countries and draws conclusions about the
similaritiesand differences noted.
Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire was deployed in Germany, Japan, Mexico, New
Zealand, The Peoples Republic of China, Spain, Sweden and Taiwan. The original survey was in English,
translated into German,Japanese and Chinese for relevant countries. The survey consists of a combination of
Likert scale, Yes/no and free-text responses. The results are quantitatively analysed using appropriate
statistical tools and the qualitative answers are interpreted (including, where appropriate, consolidated into
quantitativeresults).
Findings There are signicant differencesbetween respondents in the countries surveyedwith respect to
their general privacy attitudes and their willingness to follow Snowdens lead, even where they believe his
actionsserved the public good.
Research limitations/implications Owing to resource limitations, only university students were
surveyed. In some countries (Germanyand New Zealand), the relatively small number of respondents limits
the ability to make meaningfulstatistical comparisons between respondents from those countries and from
elsewhereon some issues.
Practical implications Snowdens actions are generally seen as laudable and having had positive
results, among the respondentssurveyed. Such results should give pause to governments seeking to expand
mass surveillanceby government entities.
Originality/value There have been few surveys regarding attitudes to Snowdens revelations, despite the
signicant press attention and political actions that have owed from it. The context of attitudes to both the
actions he revealed and the act of revelation itself is useful in constructing political and philosophical arguments
about the balance between surveillance activity for state security and the privacy of individual citizens.
Keywords Surveillance, Privacy, Social impact, Edward Snowden
Paper type Research paper
Snowdens
revelations
about the
NSA/GCHQ
311
Received 7 March 2017
Revised 20 April 2017
Accepted 20 April 2017
Journalof Information,
Communicationand Ethics in
Society
Vol.15 No. 3, 2017
pp. 311-327
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1477-996X
DOI 10.1108/JICES-03-2017-0016
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1477-996X.htm
1. Introduction
In June 2013, The Guardian in the UK and The Washington Post in the USA began
publishing internal electronic documents from the USsignals intelligence (SIGINT)
organisation the National Security Agency (NSA), provided to them by Edward Snowden
who had obtained the documents while being employed as a systems administrator at the
NSA for contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.As was done previously, the NSA and other parts
of the US Government generally did not conrm or deny the validity of the documents;
however, on 21st June 2013, the US Department of Justice charged Snowden with violating
the Espionage Act. The activitiesdetailed in the documents included activity undertaken by
the NSA and its main SIGINT partner the UKs GovernmentCommunications Headquarters
(GCHQ), and with the SIGINT agencies of three former British colonies (Canada, Australia
and New Zealand), as well as joint activitieswith similar agencies in other countries such as
Germanys Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND).
In 2014, the Pew Research Center (Madden, 2014) undertook the rst of a number of
surveys of US citizensattitudes to Snowden and the documents he revealed. In particular,
they asked questions such as whetherrespondents believed that Snowdens revelations had
served or harmed the public good, whether Snowden should be prosecuted. Inspired by
these surveys, a group of academics at Meiji University in Tokyo developed a pilot survey
deployed in Japan and Spain by use of students as the primary research population (for
reasons of resource constraints)and conducted follow-up interviews. The resultsof this pilot
survey are presented by Murata etal. (2017). Having revised the survey after analysis it was
deployed with the cooperation of local academics in Mexico, New Zealand, Spain and
Sweden (in English), and in translation in Japan and Germany. With the aid of graduate
students studying in Tokyo, it was also translated into Chinese and deployed in Taiwan
(using traditional Chinese characters) and the Peoples Republic of China (using simplied
Chinese characters). The choice of countries was a combination of deliberation and
pragmatism. The following countries had suitable resources available: New Zealand was
chosen as a Five Eyes member; Germany, Spain and Sweden provide an EU perspective;
Mexico provides a US neighbouring perspective as well as a Spanish-inuenced culture
outside Spain; and Japan,China and Taiwan provide a Southeast Asian viewpoint.
This paper presents a comparison of the results from these different countries, to
supplement the papers reporting on each country (China and Taiwan were presented in a
single paper with a number of pair-wise comparisons included). References to the results
from specic countries in the paper use three-letter codes: The Peoples Republic of China
(the PRC (CHN)); Germany (DEU); Spain (ESP); Japan (JPN); Mexico (MXC); New Zealand
(NZL); Sweden (SWE); and Taiwan(TWN).
The surveys were mostlyidentical, barring translation, but did include somelocalisation.
In particular, questions regarding respondentsawareness of the existence and role of the
NSA, GCHQ, FBI and CIA were supplemented with questions regarding appropriate local
equivalent agencies, suchas the BND in Germany whose joint activities with the NSA were
the subject of a great dealof press attention in that country.
1.1 Analytical approaches
Much of the data from the surveysconsist of Likert scale responses, usually on a four-option
scale. For all such questions, respondents could skip any question they did not wish to
answer, either giving an explicit I do not wish to answer this questionresponse, or by
simply not selecting an answer. For those questions requesting an evaluation or opinion in
response, a No opinionbox was also shown separately (to the right-hand side of the
Opinion-exposinganswers to avoid the well-known problem of median answers). The
JICES
15,3
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