Students’ Views on the Acceptability of Government Databases for the Identification of Persons: A Pilot Study

The present study aims at mapping French students’ views regarding government databases. A set of realistic scenarios depicting a situation in which a government planned to create a new, more complete database on people, was created by varying the levels of diverse factors likely to have an impact of people’s views: (a) the current situation in the country (secure vs. insecure), (b) the type of information gathered, whether it was only demographic information or more complete information, (c) the possibility of access to personal information, and (d) the level of confidentiality of the data; that is, whether they have been coded and only public authorities can have access to them or other bodies such as trade companies can take and use them. Four qualitatively different positions were found: Totally negative attitude (30%), Depends on Guaranties (40%) and Tolerable in some cases (26%). Fourteen percent were undetermined. Left-wingers were most often of the idea that government databases were either unacceptable or at best tolerable, and Right-wingers and Centrists were most often of the idea that government databases could be acceptable to the essential condition that full confidentiality is guaranteed.