Justification of Mass Surveillance: A Quantitative Study

Online mass surveillance by governmental organizations is omnipresent. Even though this results in a loss of privacy and further negative outcomes for individuals, a majority is justifying mass surveillance. Understanding, why this is the case is among others important for individuals, who want to decrease justification of mass surveillance. Therefore, this study aims to uncover the factors that drive this justification. Drawing on system justification theory we consider mass surveillance to be a political arrangement. Five factors were identified that potentially drive individuals’ justification of mass surveillance which are among others, perceived privacy control or perceived security. A quantitative study was carried out and the results support most of our hypotheses. With our results, we contribute to the privacy-related area in the domain of IS, by indicating that individuals consider mass surveillance not necessarily to be bad and by giving advice on how to alter the level of justification.

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