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This study aims to map Swedish students’ attitudes towards Snowden’s revelations and their effects in the political and socio-cultural environment of Sweden.

A questionnaire was answered by 190 Swedish university students. The quantitative responses to the survey and qualitative considerations of free text answers were statistically analysed.

Swedish students had a high level of knowledge about the Snowden revelations; they actively searched for information, gave a positive judgement of Snowden’s actions and were willing to follow his example in Sweden, although not in the USA. They trusted their country and most of its institutions and authorities except for secret service agencies and the internet and computer software companies.

This study could be used as a design of education for university students, especially in information technology programmes.

The study can be used for developing and applying policies on privacy, surveillance and whistle-blowing.

This study is part of a bigger international study to map students’ attitudes towards Snowden’s revelations and their opinions about privacy, surveillance and whistle-blowing opening up for cross-cultural analyses.

A survey of the attitudes of students in eight countries towards the revelations of mass surveillance by the US’ NSA and the UK’s GCHQ has been described in an introductory paper and seven country-specific papers (The People’s Republic of China and Taiwan are combined in a single paper). This paper aims to present a comparison of the results from these countries and draws conclusions about the similarities and differences noted.

A questionnaire was deployed in Germany, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, The People’s Republic of China, Spain, Sweden and Taiwan. The original survey was in English, translated into German, Japanese and Chinese for relevant countries. The survey consists of a combination of Likert scale, Yes/no and free-text responses. The results are quantitatively analysed using appropriate statistical tools and the qualitative answers are interpreted (including, where appropriate, consolidated into quantitative results).

There are significant differences between respondents in the countries surveyed with respect to their general privacy attitudes and their willingness to follow Snowden’s lead, even where they believe his actions served the public good.

Owing to resource limitations, only university students were surveyed. In some countries (Germany and New Zealand), the relatively small number of respondents limits the ability to make meaningful statistical comparisons between respondents from those countries and from elsewhere on some issues.

Snowden’s actions are generally seen as laudable and having had positive results, among the respondents surveyed. Such results should give pause to governments seeking to expand mass surveillance by government entities.

There have been few surveys regarding attitudes to Snowden’s revelations, despite the significant press attention and political actions that have flowed from it. The context of attitudes to both the actions he revealed and the act of revelation itself is useful in constructing political and philosophical arguments about the balance between surveillance activity for state security and the privacy of individual citizens.

Scholars have explained how people in Japan feel ashamed when elderly members of the family are cared for by formal services such as day care or government/commercial-based nursing homes due to the cultural norms of the consciousness of social appearance. However, this consciousness of social appearance plays a minimum role when it comes to elderly Japanese immigrant women's preference to utilize formal care services in the United States. They see receiving family based care as a burden on their middle-aged children (or grandchildren) and they prefer purchasing formal long-term care services when they can no longer feel confident about maintaining their independent lives. Elderly Japanese immigrant women hold rather positive views on formal care in the United States, including nursing homes. This chapter suggests that elderly Japanese immigrant women may not consider it shameful to utilize formal care as many previous scholars have suggested.