The government is not trustworthy for people's privacy?

The vast majority of Americans are concerned about their privacy, and almost half of them on average doubt the government will protect it. This according to a report released this week by the Ponemon Institute, a privacy think tank.

The survey of more than 6,300 Americans, sponsored by the CIO Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, an IT education and research organization, asked adults to rate their confidence in different government agencies as it pertains to privacy. Privacy is important or very important to 83% of them. And the average privacy trust score of 52% indicates that "the general public holds a relatively low or negative impression of various federal government organizations that are presented in our survey."

The U.S. Postal Service received the highest marks, with a 78% favorable rating. The Internal Revenue Service also did well, coming in third at 75%. The Office of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice had the lowest marks, with 21% and 22%, respectively.

"I do think the findings show there's a wide range of perception about what the government does and doesn't do," says Larry Ponemon, founder of the Ponemon Institute and an adjunct professor of ethics and privacy at the CIO Institute. While stressing that one should be careful when drawing conclusions based on such research, he notes that a lot of respondents "expressed concern about Big Brother and the violation of civil liberties."

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