What is it About Cyberattacks that Drives Support for Surveillance Policies? Insights from Experiments in the UK

Do cyberattacks prompt popular support for intrusive surveillance policies? The delicate equilibrium between security and civil liberty has ebbed and flowed over time. Today, the introduction of a new generation of surveillance policies has roiled the traditional privacy-security dilemma. We advancedtwo controlled randomized experiments exposing respondents to professionally produced television reports of attacks on national rail infrastructure. Findings show that when high levels of perceived threat are combined with fatal attacks, the public will concede new surveillance powers to government authorities. The tradeoff between security and liberty is sensitive to information about fatalities, and to updated perception of threats.