mdoneil writes “ABC News say that only 35% of Americans think the datamining facilitated by the telcos is a bad thing.
The report about the ABC News/WaPo poll is available here.
I don’t find this too surprising and I think the media are making a mountain out of a mole hill. I did however think it would have been split a bit closer to the middle.
While I do object to the telcos giving my phone records over without my consent, I don’t object to the NSA having the records. If they asked they could have had them.
Of course I’ve been mad at the phone company for years.”
OOps
One comment accidently deleted.
Big Brother is Us
Its not split the way you thought because its not a political issue. If you list all the different ways our personal information is ‘out-and-about’ it would be a long one and it would have been that way for a while now. The IRS would probably be the first major institution to collect personal information but many private enterprises do too and for various reasons. People are used to this and they aren’t so much mad that government and business have it so much as what occasionaly happens with it, like the recent debacle when the Boston Globe used its subcriber list to wrap up outgoing newspapers.
Live by the poll, die by the poll
A newer poll from USA Today shows that 51% disapprove of the NSA having a complete calling database drawn from hundreds of millions of innocent Americans. According to the story that came with the poll “By nearly 2-1, 62%-34%, they support immediate congressional hearings to investigate it.”
In some respects, whether the public endorses surveillance is besides the point. All polls tell us is how people feel about an issue or whether they know specific facts. Polls by themselves can’t tell the legality or morality of a given action. In this case, I think that the courts and history will show that the Administration has once again overstepped its constitutional authority.