Survey: Many Americans say 'Big Brother' is here
A growing number of Internet users are concerned about the government checking on their online activities - but even more people were worried about businesses doing the same.
There’s little wonder why George Orwell’s novel 1984 is seeing a resurgence in sales.
More than half of Americans polled in a survey released Thursday said they agreed with the statement “We are really in the era of Big Brother.”
The survey from the University of Southern California was conducted last year, before recent revelations of large-scale, secret government surveillance programs. Yet it still found that some 35 per cent of respondents agreed that “There is no privacy, get over it.”
A growing number of Internet users said they are concerned about the government checking on their online activities, according to the survey. But even more people were worried about businesses doing the same.
The USC Annenberg School’s Center for the Digital Future has polled more than 2,000 US households about their Internet and technology use each year, with the exception of 2011, since 1999.
Forty-three per cent of Internet users said they are concerned about the government checking what they do online, up from 38 per cent in 2010. But 57 per cent said they were worried about private companies doing the same thing — up from 48 per cent in the earlier study.