Research proposals on security sometimes involve plans to examine people's perceptions of security. Innocuous though these may seem – especially compared to much security-related research which involves the development of devices for spying on people, for mining social networking sites, or the construction and testing of dangerous devices of one sort or another- surveys are less ‘innocent' and straightforward than they may first appear. In particular, the moral and political questions that they raise can be surprisingly complex and knotty.