A ten-year study in Sweden shows a sharply falling popular support for mass surveillance, even if necessary to protect national security. Over a ten-year period, opinion has shifted ten points, and people who think that wiretapping and surveillance are never justified are on the rise. Overall, a mere 12% support mass surveillance of the Internet.

The study (in Swedish) highlights a few interesting points. Roughly 70% of people think that wiretapping of phones is acceptable in exceptional cases. However, as we all know, this is not what’s currently happening; every phone is always wiretapped today, or at least, it could be. Over the past ten years, the group saying this kind of wiretapping is “always acceptable” has fallen from 25% to 15%.

It’s notable here that an increasing amount of people consider wiretapping of private communications to never be acceptable, that is, not even in exceptional cases (like with a formal suspect).

There’s also a separate entry in the study whether respondents found surveillance of Internet traffic acceptable. There is a lot less support for this than for wiretapping of phones, which illustrates the increase in sensitivity of what happens online: 24% say that it is never acceptable (not even with a formal suspect), 54% in exceptional cases, and 12% say it is always acceptable.

The support for mass surveillance of the Internet, according to this Swedish study, is a mere 12%. In other words, mass surveillance is less popular than genital herpes, according to Gallup numbers.

It remains to be seen whether powerholders insist on wiretapping the entire population. It’s a structure that has been built already, so it requires effort to tear down, but few things have been so unpopular throughout history as a government that showed clear distrust in their own electorate.

Privacy remains your own responsibility.