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Mister Chairman, members
of the committee, and guests.
I appreciate having this
opportunity to review with the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer
Protection the findings of our Gallup polls relating to privacy over the
Internet.
Although there are concerns
about privacy that relate to a wide variety of settings in today’s society, my
testimony today focuses exclusively on concerns relating to personal information
and use patterns of the Internet.
Our data suggest that about 53%
of adult Americans use the Internet on a regular basis either at home, work or
at school. It is to this population
that I will be referring in the rest of this testimony.
One key question we asked
Internet users in our poll last fall related to the role of the Federal
government in these matters. About
half of Internet users said that the Federal government should be “paying more
attention to matters of Internet” privacy.
About a third said that what the federal government was doing now was
about right, while 13% said that the government should in fact pay “less
attention” to matters of Internet privacy.
We obtained roughly the same
answers when we asked in a slightly different way if the federal government
should do more or do less to ensure citizens’ privacy on line.
In this case, however, only 6% said that the government should do less.
Half said “do more” and forty percent said what the government was
doing now was about right.
The interpretation of these
types of responses is a challenge. In
this particular situation, we have no trend data.
This is the first time we have asked about Internet privacy in this
fashion, and therefore we cannot place the current sentiment in the context of
historical patterns. We also have
few pre-existing hypotheses.
We do know that roughly half of
Internet users say that they are very concerned about the “privacy of personal
information you give out on the Internet, as well as privacy regarding what you
do on the Internet”. Another
three out of ten are somewhat concerned, meaning that only about twenty percent
say they are not concerned.
But, on the other hand, the
issue itself does not appear to be highly salient to Internet users.
Just about 16% said in our poll last fall that they were following issues
relating to privacy of personal information and use patterns on the Internet
very closely, while about half said that they weren’t following the issue
closely at all.
Our conclusion is that this is
an issue which is of significant potential concern, but one which has not yet
moved to the point where it is a currently front-burner problem to many
Americans who regularly use the Internet.
We can get a little more
specific. We gave our respondents six different dimensions of the
Internet privacy issue and asked them to rate their concern over each.
At the top of the list are
concerns about the government being able to “tap” into Internet e-mail.
For whatever reason, some 63% of Internet users are “very concerned”
about this issue. Second in the
list comes the issue of “large online databases which publish telephone
directories, property tax information, legal information and other publicly
available records which allow database subscribers to investigate the lives of
ordinary Americans”. Sixty
percent of Internet users are very concerned about this issue.
There is somewhat less concern
about the government’s ability to “tap” into suspects’ computers, and
still less concern about Internet advertisers gathering marketing information
about people who click on their ads, and corporate websites which gather
marketing information about consumers by tracking their habits.
Although the percentage of
Americans who are “very” concerned about these issues ranges from 43% to
63%, most of the rest say that they are at least “somewhat” concerned.
Relatively few web users say that they are not too or not at all
concerned.
In summary, I would say that
the issue of Internet privacy is not one of the gravest concern to Internet
users today, but one which has the potential to be a significant perceived
problem in the years ahead. In
terms of specific governmental remedies and actions, about half of the Internet
user population feels that the federal government should get more involved, but
most of the rest think that the government is doing today is just about right.
One last point.
Our poll shows that Americans have no preconceived notion as to which
political party will do a better job handling this issue.
Thank you.
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