Public Opinion of Surveillance: Balancing Public Safety and Individual Privacy in the United Kingdom

A Senior Honors Thesis on the Formation of Public Opinion of Government Surveillance in the United Kingdom, 1990-2016. This paper examines fear of crime and concern for civil liberties as factors that shaped public opinion of government surveillance in the United Kingdom from 1990-2016. During this time, public opinion of surveillance was mostly positive, reflecting the belief that surveillance was a powerful crime-fighting and public safety tool. Critiques relating to surveillance’s potential to infringe on civil liberties, specifically the human right of privacy, were less influential on public opinion. Even as concerns about privacy rights garnered more attention in recent surveillance discourses in the media and in policymaking, existing patterns of surveillance had become so normalized that public opinion did not change significantly or lead to meaningful policy changes. This paper analyzes the dominance of perceived safety over privacy rights in the formation of public opinion of government surveillance and highlights the normalization of penetrative surveillance systems at the expense of active civic discourse around surveillance policy and privacy rights.