摘要：This research note highlights the comparative findings of a recent repeat survey of surveillance and privacy. It also draws attention to the usefulness of public opinion surveys for scanning popular responses to surveillance in different contexts and between different countries. The findings from a survey administered in Canada and the USA in 2006, then repeated in a 2012 poll, indicate some continuities and some relevant changes in mood over time. Knowledge of the internet and of softwares such as GPS is relatively high in both countries and this is accented among younger groups, especially males. Similarly, while a higher proportion than previously think they have a say over what happens to their personal data, the younger, the more so. In both countries, more people than before believe that camera surveillance is effective. Curiously, knowledge of laws regulating personal data flows has declined while a greater proportion now consider security-surveillance intrusive. And although responses to workplace surveillance are basically similar, the idea that employers may share data with others is censured. At national borders there is less support for giving extra security checks to visible minorities. People take more steps to protect their personal data in each country, although they worry much more about what corporations, as compared with governments, might do with them. Fluctuations by age and gender occur here too.
