Privacy in Criminal Investigations: A Survey. Criminal Investigation and Privacy: Opinions of Citizens

Abstract Governmental authorities should have the power to infringe the privacy of citizens in order to investigate crime. That opinion is prevailing and uncontroversial in most Western countries. Less articulate and more controversial in these societies, however, are ideas about the extent to which the authorities should be allowed to pursue infringements on the privacy of citizens. Naturally, opinions of citizens about the conflict between the interests of criminal investigation and privacy seem to matter in the debate on the acceptability of existing and new methods of investigation. However, what exactly are those opinions and what role should they play in the debate? To put it another way: “What, according to citizens, are the important considerations with regard to the normative conflict between judicial interests and privacy”? And: “In what way should the views of citizens be of help to the legislator in the process of determining the range of investigative authorities and competencies”? These questions — the first a descriptive one and the second a normative one — were at the heart of a research project that focused on the views of Dutch citizens, which was carried out during the autumn of 2000 and spring 2001 (that is, before 11 September). 1 In this article, we report primarily on the results obtained from the first question: “how do citizens perceive the conflict between privacy and the interests of criminal investigation”?