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US adults try to shield cyber info

By Reuters
Washington, 17 Mar 2015

Thirty percent of adults in the US have taken steps to hide their information from government surveillance programs monitoring phone and electronic communications, a Pew Research Centre survey said yesterday.

Twenty-two percent said they had changed their use of various technology platforms "a great deal" or "somewhat" since former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden disclosed the surveillance in mid-2013, the survey showed.

"We find that a portion of the population is adjusting some activity at least in some simple ways like changing their privacy settings and being a bit more discreet in the things they say and search for," said Lee Rainie, director of Internet, science, and technology research at the Pew Research Centre.

Eighty-seven percent of US Americans have heard at least something about the monitoring programs, the survey showed.

Among this group, 17% said they had changed privacy settings on social media to shield information from the government; 15% have avoided certain software applications, and 15% have used social media less often.

Some 57% of those surveyed said it was unacceptable for the government to monitor the communications of US citizens, but about 80% said it was acceptable to monitor communications of suspected terrorists; 60% said it was OK to monitor the communications of US and foreign leaders.

Overall, 52% of US Americans described themselves as "very concerned" or "somewhat concerned" about the government monitoring. Nearly half said they were "not very concerned" or "not at all concerned".

Rainie was to release the findings in a presentation at the South By Southwest Conference in Austin, Texas.

The Pew survey comprised 475 adults and was carried out between 26 November 2014 and 3 January 2015. The sampling error is 5.6 percentage points.

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