On privacy, talk and actions are poles apart

Bob Sullivan Technology correspondent • Profile • E-mail

Do people feel their privacy slipping away?  They do.

Do people trust their government or corporations to protect their privacy? They don't.

Would they submit to having a computer chip implanted in their skin to help identify them? Many would.

That's just one of the surprises revealed by MSNBC.com's privacy survey, conducted over the past month. 

The 30-question survey, developed in consultation with researcher Larry Ponemon of The Ponemon Institute, should not be considered scientific. More than 6,500 MSNBC.com users voluntarily took the survey by last week, when the results were analyzed. The survey reflects a self-selected group that likely is more interested in privacy-related issues than the general population. Nevertheless, the results are generally consistent with numerous surveys Ponemon and other privacy researchers have conducted.

The most obvious paradox on display in the survey results are that Americans are much more trusting than they say they are.

NBC VIDEO Privacy lost MSNBC.com's Bob Sullivan discusses the poll results with MSNBC's Chris Jansing. MSNBC

While most people feel uneasy about their privacy, they have a lot of trouble defining just what it is and what they can do to protect it. As a result, they appear willing to tolerate many behaviors by their government and corporations that they might consider invasions of privacy.

People have almost no faith in either their government or corporations to protect their privacy, the survey indicated. When asked "Who do you trust more to protect your privacy — government or private corporations," a full 88 percent picked the third option — "neither."   

But despite this near universal skepticism, consumers expressed a willingness to share intimate details of their lives with government agencies and businesses:

• About 40 percent of respondents said they would willingly submit to voluntary fingerprinting at their local police station.
• 60 percent said they would carry a high-tech driver's license with an embedded ID chip or biometric device.
• Nearly 20 percent said they would have a tiny microchip implanted under their skin that could be used to identify them and access their medical histories.

Convenience trumps privacy
"It tells me that there is not a lot of trust, that people believe their privacy is eroding, but that they value convenience over privacy," Ponemon said of the results. “It is surprising.”

There’s a degree of pragmatism in the choices, Ponemon said. Privacy-activist behaviors such as refusing to sign up for supermarket loyalty cards, toll booth E-ZPass electronic radio signal devices or express security lines at airports would result in “a very inconvenient life,” he said.

The quest for convenience was nowhere to be found when MSNBC.com users were asked to define privacy. Many wrote in a passionate tone usually reserved for defense of a fundamental human rights – or constitutional discussions of liberty itself. 

The most commonly used expression was that privacy is “the right to be left alone.” Other answers included: “the right to protect myself from improper use of my personal information”; “the ability to share only what one chooses to share”; or the paradoxical “being left alone to do what I please, when, where & how I please (within limits of the law).”

Very few people are satisfied with the state of privacy in America:

• 7 percent said they did not think their privacy is currently being eroded.
• 9 percent said they believed their privacy is slipping away, but "I can live with that."
• 3 percent agreed that privacy is a relic, that no one enjoys privacy any more and "I can live with that." 
• 80 percent indicated their sense of privacy is waning "and that bothers me." 

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