TRACEY TYLER
Toronto Star
Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Canadians aren't entirely troubled that Big Brother may be watching. It's his blabbing that has them worried.

In the aftermath of 9/11 and other terrorist attacks around the world, most Canadians are willing to put up with a certain amount of surveillance, such as security cameras in stores and even employers reading their email. And almost no one would deliberately provide governments with inaccurate personal information.

But they don't trust governments to protect that information — and are opposed to giving governments free rein to share it with other countries

Those are some of the findings of a study by researchers at Queen's University, who questioned nearly 9,000 people in eight countries about everything from workplace privacy and consumer surveillance to national identity cards and racial profiling at airports.

The survey, believed to be the first of its kind, had 1,001 Canadian respondents. The margin of error for the Canadian portion of the study was plus or minus 3.1 per cent.

The survey is the work of the Surveillance Project, a group of sociology and business experts at Queen's studying issues relating to privacy and the flow of information around the world.

In the post-9/11 world, governments believe people are worried. And the Queen's researchers found they are — often about measures politicians claim will protect a country's citizens.

Elia Zureik, a professor emeritus of sociology at Queen's and one of the project's leaders, said his team wanted to question people from countries with varying political cultures; Canada, the United States, Hungary, Spain, France, Brazil and China were chosen.

The study found that almost half of Canadians and even more Americans find steps touted as national security measures to be intrusive.

In Canada, 47 per cent of respondents disagreed with the idea of requiring every citizen to carry a national identity card. In the United States, 42 per cent felt that way.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said the ID cards are not an option his government is leaning toward.

A majority — about 60 per cent of Canadians — reject outright the idea that visible minorities should be subjected to extra security screening at airports. The results were comparable among those surveyed in China, Hungary and Brazil. Only about a third of Americans find the notion unacceptable.

At least a third of respondents in all countries objected to governments collecting and sharing a traveller's personal information, unless the traveller is suspected of wrongdoing.

When Canadians were asked, as part of a hypothetical scenario, to assume the government created a database to search for terrorist activity and required everyone to submit an annual form containing details about themselves, including work details, criminal and travel history, fewer than a third felt they would have any significant control over the information.

Most people surveyed in other countries agreed, except the French and Chinese.

There, 60 and 67 per cent of people respectively felt they had a lot of say over what happened to information collected about them. The Chinese are very trusting of their government. Sixty per cent believe — or say they believe — the government will keep secure the personal information it collects.

But for most people, some sort of formal safeguard is a requirement, said Zureik.

"People are not against giving information to government agencies, as long as the information is protected and is not used for purposes for which it was not intended," Zureik said.

The best way to do this is through legislation, he said.

Surveillance experts from the countries in the study will meet at Queen's on Friday and Saturday to discuss the results.

with files from canadian press

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