Public attitudes towards a national identity "smart card:" privacy and security concerns

Author

Hiltz, Starr Roxanne ; Han, Hyo-Joo ; Briller, Vladimir

Author_Institution

Dept. of Inf. Syst., New Jersey Inst. of Technol., Newark, NJ, USA

fYear

2003

fDate

6-9 Jan. 2003

Abstract

Tracking technologies use pervasive information systems to scan and record the location of individuals and to transfer information about them to and from a central database. One potential application is a "smart" national identity card (NID). National polls have shown a strong majority of Americans favor an NID in recent months. This study uses a telephone poll with 400 respondents and semistructured interviews with 29 New Jersey adults to explore in depth the concerns and opinions that explain the "surface" opinion that is elicited with a single question. The results indicate that most people actually have very mixed feelings, with strong reservations about privacy and civil rights implications and also the security of the information on the card itself from theft or misuse.

Keywords

data privacy; government data processing; public administration; security of data; smart cards; socio-economic effects; Americans; New Jersey adults; USA; central database; civil rights; individual location; information security; information transfer; national identity card; pervasive information systems; privacy concerns; public attitudes; security concerns; semistructured interviews; smart card; surface opinion; telephone poll; tracking technologies; Data security; Databases; Fingerprint recognition; Global Positioning System; Information security; Information systems; National security; Privacy; Smart cards; Telephony;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

System Sciences, 2003. Proceedings of the 36th Annual Hawaii International Conference on

Print_ISBN

0-7695-1874-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/HICSS.2003.1174312

Filename

1174312