Although the perceived safety of providing governments with personal information increased from 2001 to 2002, people of both genders and all ages around the world continue to harbor serious reservations about interacting with their governments over the internet. That adults in Japan, Germany, France and Italy -- all countries with well-established democratic institutions and large, sophisticated internet user populations -- have the world’s highest levels of concern about the safety and security of online government websites (i.e. where and to what ends any personal information they submit will be used) indicates a serious shortcoming in the push to move government services to the internet.
In many ways, the people surveyed by TNS have reason to be concerned. Although the study alludes to a change in the meaning of e-government in the US following 11 September 2001, it overlooks the degree to which debates on online privacy and security have changed in the past year. Governments, particularly in the US, have stepped up their focus on using information systems to gather intelligence and prevent both cyber-crime and cyber-terrorism (as well as conventional forms of terrorism). Already there are signs that this effort is creating conflicts with the goal of bringing citizen-oriented government services online.
According to a study released in September 2002 by Brown University’s Taubman Center for Public Policy, state and federal government websites in the US have demonstrated an increased emphasis on instituting security policies and offering detailed descriptions of their privacy policies, but at the same time “are introducing more clearcut loopholes in those policies that have the potential to invade the privacy of ordinary citizens.” As an example, the Taubman study points out that more than one-third of US government websites surveyed provide information about site visitors to law enforcement authorities.
Government use of the internet to collect personal information and transaction data will undoubtedly increase in the wake of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the green light given to the Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) – the same research and development organization that helped to pioneer the internet – to further expansion of its Total Information Awareness database. Although citizens in the US as well as around the world may support their governments’ efforts to stamp out terrorism, the TNS study suggests that they may refrain from warming to online government services if doing so involves sacrifices of their privacy.
Quelle: eMarketer
