Is Obama The Privacy Presidential Candidate?

Over at the MSNBC Red Tape Chronicles blog, Bob Sullivan reports the results of a recent Ponemon Institute poll:

"Americans think Barack Obama is the Democrat most likely to advance their privacy rights and that Rudy Giuliani is the least privacy-sensitive... The telephone poll of 600 adults, conducted by private research firm The Ponemon Institute, also found that 40 percent of Americans say protection of privacy rights is either important or very important in determining preference for the next presidential election."

About the apparent inverse relationship between privacy and security issues:

"Ponemon said he was not surprised that Giuliani scored lowest among major candidates, since the former New York mayor is often associated with national security issues. "People see him as pro-security, pro-surveillance, pro-wiretapping, and they figure if he's doing that he's not making privacy a top priority," Ponemon said."

I found this to be a surprise:

"... young voters are more privacy-sensitive than previously believed. Among 18- to 28-year-olds, the MySpace-Facebook generation, 54 percent said privacy issues would be a factor in determining their choice for president, significantly higher than the 40 percent rating among the general population."

Privacy seems to be one of several key issues voters will evaluate the candidates against.