Workplace security and tracking

One of the most important and persistent debates about surveillance involves the tradeoff between personal security and privacy. In previous research about national surveillance tied to terrorism-related investigations, Pew Research Center has found that a majority of Americans support the idea of government surveillance of others, including monitoring of American leaders, but oppose surveillance of Americans themselves. One scenario in this survey places this tradeoff in the context of a workplace setting: "Several co-workers of yours have recently had personal belongings stolen from your workplace, and the company is planning to install high-resolution security cameras that use facial recognition technology to help identify the thieves and make the workplace more secure. The footage would stay on file as long as the company wishes to retain it, and could be used to track various measures of employee attendance and performance."

By a two-to-one margin (54% to 24%) a majority of Americans would find the installation of surveillance cameras and corresponding retention of data to be acceptable, while one fifth (21%) of adults say their consideration of this tradeoff would depend on the circumstances. There are no statistically significant differences in people’s answers to this question by different demographic groups: Men and women, young and old, and relatively well off and relatively poor are all equally likely to say this scenario is acceptable.