Young Westerners Support Snowden, Study Finds
Published 22 April 2015
teleSUR
As Western nations ramp up mass surveillance programs, their younger generations are largely supportive of U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden. Young Westerners overwhelming support U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden, according to a study released Wednesday.
Conducted in ten Western nations, the study found people born between the 1980s and 2000 familiar with Snowden generally don't believe his disclosures harmed national security, but do think they should lead to more privacy rights.
Snowden was responsible for leaking documents from the U.S. National Security Agency in 2013 that revealed the agency was engaging in the bulk collection of telecommunications data both within the United States and abroad.
Young Italians had the most favorable views of Snowden, with 86 percent of survey participants expressing positive views of the whistleblower. Snowden was least supported in his home country of the United States, where 56 percent of youths saw him in a positive light.
The study was commissioned by the American Civil Liberties Union, which pointed out that in many countries surveyed, governments are actively expanding secretive mass surveillance programs.
“The parliaments of Canada, France, and the Netherlands are considering expansive surveillance powers similar to those of the USA Patriot Act, and Australia recently enacted such a law,” the ACLU stated.
In March, Australia's two major political parties – Labor and the Coalition – joined forces to ram a mandatory data retention law through parliament. The law forces telecommunications providers to store customer phone and internet records for at least two years, and hand over data to security agencies on request.
Yet broad youth support for Snowden means a fierce fight to roll back mass surveillance is “inevitable,” according to the ACLU executive director Anthony Romero. “(Millenials) are a generation of digital natives who don’t want government agencies tracking them online or collecting data about their phone calls,” Romero stated. He continued, “Old folks just don’t get it. The new generation will fix it if we don’t.”
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