Majority of Americans Say NSA Phone Tracking Is OK To Fight Terrorism

An anonymous reader writes "While the tech media has gone wild the past few days with the reports of the NSA tracking Verizon cell usage and creating the PRISM system to peer into our online lives, a new study by Pew Research suggests that most U.S. citizens think it's okay. 62 percent of Americans say losing some personal privacy is acceptable as long as its used to fight terrorism, and 56 percent are okay with the NSA tracking phone calls. Online tracking is fair less popular however, with only 45 percent approving of the practice. The data also shows that the youth are far more opposed to curtailing privacy to fight terror, which could mean trouble for politicians planning to continue these programs in the coming years."

Comments

I'm Agreeing With Bill O'Reilly

[Jason Levine]

I thought I'd never type the above words, but on this morning's Today Show, Bill O'Reilly was on and talking about Snowden and the NSA spying. He said that if Snowden is right and the NSA is spying on everyone then Snowden is a hero and the NSA is wrong. If Snowden is lying, then, then what he did was very wrong. O'Reilly went on to say that it is not acceptable to spy on everyone just to catch a few terrorists (if this is even effective... there's no transparency at all so we don't know) and there should be measures in place to ensure that they only collect data on people they need to spy on (e.g. suspects).

Do you see what you've done, Obama and NSA? You've got me agreeing with Bill O'Reilly! Surely, this is one of the signs of the apocalypse!

(In all seriousness, I'm sure O'Reilly supported programs like this under Bush and is only opposed to them now because Obama's doing it. I'm also sure that, had I listened to the interview a bit more I'd have disagreed with him on something - or he toned down his rhetoric for the Today Show audience. Still agreeing with him for as long as I did was scary.)