Hybrid Threats and the Erosion of Democracy from Within: US Surveillance and European Security
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Hybrid Threats and the Erosion of Democracy from Within: US Surveillance and European Security Carol Atkinson1 · Giacomo Chiozza2 Received: 5 July 2020 / Accepted: 9 September 2020 © Fudan University 2020
Abstract Democratic governments have argued that their ability to counter hybrid threats—threats that come from irregular agents such as violent extremists, criminal networks, and cyber attackers—depends on their ability to monitor all forms of online communication. This presents a conundrum for democratic citizens: either governments surveil their communications or they risk endangering the security of their societies. To assess the tradeoffs people make between freedom, privacy, and security, we analyze survey data from seven NATO countries in Europe to assess whether, to what extent, and why European citizens are willing to trade privacy for security. We find that women (rather than men) and the internationalists (rather than the nationalists) are the people who most sharply draw a distinction between targeted surveillance, which is acceptable to them, and blanket surveillance, which is not. We also find that favorable views of the United States and confidence in President Obama make European citizens more willing to support US surveillance programs targeting not only terrorist suspects but also ordinary people and their political leaders. Pro-US attitudes may ease US statecraft, but they do not necessarily foster a healthy balance between freedom and security in the age of asymmetric threats. Keywords Surveillance · Privacy · Hybrid threats · Democracy · European public opinion · US world order We would like to thank Jeff Carter, Monti Datta, Joe Grieco, Peter Katzenstein, Andrew Reddie, Jonathan Swarts, Rob Trager, Yantsislav Yanakiev, and the CPSR reviewers for comments and suggestions. Data, replication files, and an online appendix, which includes information on the statistical models, the data, the measurement of the variables, and the descriptive statistics, are available at https://www.chiozza.org. Mistakes, omissions, and other assorted infelicities are our own responsibility. * Giacomo Chiozza [email protected] Carol Atkinson [email protected] 1
Independent Scholar, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
2
Department of International Studies, American University of Sharjah, PO Box 26666, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
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Chinese Political Science Review
1 Introduction People might have always suspected it. But since Edward Snowden’s revelations, it is no longer a secret that the US government has been surveilling the communications of private citizens in the United States and in foreign countries (Greenwald 2014). For the people of democratic societies, the revelations brought home a stark reality: in the new security environment of the post-9/11 world, their freedoms and privacy were not sacrosanct. Under the guise of programs named PRISM or XKeyscore, the US National Security Agency has collected troves of data in its efforts to combat “hybrid threats”
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