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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."
It's not true!
That the majority of the public are short term thinking morons?
It doesn't matter whether or not all that has been claimed of PRISM is true, they are happy to give up privacy and freedoms if it "helps fight terrorism"
The majority of Americans (1) don't understand the extent of the surveillance, and (2) don't understand why privacy is so important.
I totally believe this poll.
This article says that 70% of Americans don't know what the constitution is: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1368482/How-ignorant-Americans-An-alarming-number-U-S-citizens-dont-know-basic-facts-country.html
Click bait for the countless 14-yo libertarians who infest these boards.
What about the 14-yo non-libertarians who whine that there are countless 14-yo libertarians on Slashdot?
And who be just OUTRAGED, that somebody dared to point out that the government is the collective will of the people, and may actually have our interests and safety as their core mission
Collective will or no, the government isn't supposed to violate the constitution; the majority do not and should not have absolute power, and neither should the government. Individual rights need to be protected, and I probably couldn't even be considered a libertarian.
Most people are weak and prefer not to think about "bad things", and prefer security with freedom, they would not know what to do with it if they would have some...
This said it would be interesting to ask the same questions in the following way:
Assuming that of the two leading parties the one you like least has the majority in senat and house of representative, and presidential powers.
Would you agree to warrent-less investigations of phones calls, emails, instant messages, social network posting, microblogging posting, private forum messages in order to fight terrorism is:
- a good thing
- necessary
- undecided
- useless
- bad for the society
- where is my second amendment demonstrator !
Opinion poll can be easily be 'lead' into a specific conclusion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA
You can strongly influence the result of questionnaire by using leading questions.
For example:
o Do you believe it's OK for the government to track and monitor private citizens email and phone calls so they can fight terrorism?
vs.
o Do you believe it's OK for the government to track and monitor private citizens email and phone calls?
The general population has been more or less brainwashed to give up their rights as soon as the phrase "fight terrorism" or "war on terror" is used.
--- Reality doesn't care about your opinions, it happens anyway and if you are in the way you'll get squished.
Know nothing of history.
... the first time someone commented re: PRISM and other NSA directives, along the lines of, "Whatever, as long as it prevents another 9/11!" Now that it's been a few more days, I'm starting to break the habit of facepalming. We as a nation are affirming our commitment to the implementation of a police state, in the name of preventing something that was already about as statistically impossible as getting hit by lightning while claiming your Powerball jackpot.
Inasmuch as this is the will of the majority and of the representatives in our Republic, you can bet I'll be claiming my winnings from within the safe confines of an OSHA-approved rubber suit.
Fer christ sake, more people die from nose hair complications than terrorism, what have we come to?
Most people fear things that are very unlikely to happen:
-Death from terrorism
-Death from oppressive government
We rant and shout with each other over which one is the bigger threat.
Meanwhile, most of us die from lack of proper personal health (diet, exercise, etc) or automobile wrecks, all of which are 100% within our ability to control.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Just calling to see how that new-fangled "liberty" thing is working out for you?
Oh, you don't give a shit anymore?
I think that's because most of the prosecution under the BS Espionage act isn't very public. I think some celebrity should get sued by the government so that it would be written all over the popular trashy magazines... :)
1004 people gives an error in determining the percentage response for the larger pool of "everyone in the USA" of 3.2%. Therefore a gap of more than 9.6% is statistically significant and reliable to indicate that there IS a gap and the majority accept tracking.
You would need to show that the sampling was biased toward those liable to accept or the wording was partisan and leading if you wish to call this study bullshit.
The government has been running a full-court press on the media and everyone else to get them to shut up and get in line. Yesterday there was a poll saying the exact opposite, like 59% saying the opposite across the partisan divide, and now magically it's the other way. I've been monitoring the blogs Left & Right and even Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are tamping down since calling it a "coup d'etat" last week.
The government is scared at how nonpartisan the outrage has been. The Whitehouse and Congress are complicit in this all-out assault on the Constitution and the American Republic. They know that if they can cow the American people into swallowing this that they will then have carte blanche. But whether the people do swallow this or not, things go rapidly downhill from here.
And note, which party is in office is totally irrelevant here. The Republicans and Democrats have both been in on it.
I hug my family very close these days, because it's about to get very ugly and we all could lose everything.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Hush! Don't give the government its next pretext for an expansion of the police state! I can see it now: "nose hair complications are *deadlier than terrorism*"!
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
It's official then, it's not the land of the free anymore. Because if you don't want your freedom, you don't deserve it.
Oppressed people at least know that things should be different. They might lack the resources or resolve to fight the system right here and now, but they know things aren't right and just might stand up any moment.
The US, on the other hand - and to be honest, lots of the west - has become the worst kind of oppressive system, worse than 1984. The kind where the oppressed believe the lies they are told. Russians knew that Prawda wasn't telling them the truth. Way too many americans believe Fox does.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The article that you link to in the Daily Mail panders to a peculiar kind of 'stupid american' stereotype that we Brits cling to when we want to feel better about the end of empire and the decline of our military and industrial might. You could replace the questions with ones of similar obscurity from British history and get a similar set of responses from a random selection of British folk. Try going out onto any street in the UK and asking the yokels about the 1689 Bill of Rights. Or get them to point to the location of the Battle of Trafalgar / Waterloo / Balaclava on a map.
The average guy on the street is just as ignorant everywhere in the world.
Mission accomplished - brainwashing succeded.
Well, did it?
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
The government can have access ... IF they have probable cause that you are involved in criminal activity AND they obtain a warrant precisely describing what information they want to seize.
They CANNOT just copy all of your personal data and save it for future use.
We fought a revolution partly because we didn't want the government to be able to arbitrarily spy on innocent people and the Fourth Amendment clearly elaborates this prohibitions on government.
It's rare that I quote a famous figure, as so often it's cliche to the point of deserving a cluebat-induced coma. However, I think this quote from Sam Adams accurately describes the state of America (better than the famous Franklin quote so often cited here) and how so many would sacrifice their rights to ensure their happy consumerist lifestyles:
When it comes to rights, you can't use public opinion polls. The Bill of Rights is designed to protect the minority from the majority. Phone tracking is not a threat to most people. The government has no reason to be concerned with them. But the few who are a concern have the right to live their lives without unnecessary oversight from the government.
That's why the number for online tracking is less popular.
This is the headtitle of some European editorials.
For the younger people: Stasi (Staatssicherheit) archived "information" on *everybody* in former DDR.
1 on 50 in former DDR was linked to Stasi as one of 90000 employees or 200000 informants.
Half of American households make $50520 or less a year. When my household was below median income, I know we had bigger things to worry about than privacy. It may be important but it isn't pressing for most people.
I was one of those who was surveyed. I am happy to report that in this case I was one of the minority - in fact, I'd say this level of invasion is akin to terrorism itself, in that many are terrified that this egregious act of domestic espionage is only the tip of a very large iceberg.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
Another question that should have been asked in this poll: Are you aware that 9/11 could have been prevented if FBI headquarters had simply paid attention to reports from their field offices, and no dragnet monitoring would have been needed?
The privacy isn't about the average yokel. It's about people in power tracking and hassling political opposition.
Was nobody listening to this Snowden guy? He said he could start listening to conversations of anyone at any time, including powerful people, and proceeded to do so as a test. No alarm bells went off somewhere -- "Whoa! Phone tap but no warrant!". He didn't even worry about internal tracking.
It's not about you. It's about inserting an operative as one of hundreds of terrorist agents, but who listens to opposition conversations, or, hell, business discussions for that matter.
By asking, "Do you care if they track your phone?" you've already missed the point.
I feel like Willy Wonka sarcastically admonishing kids for the umpteenth time, sighing and pointlessly mumbling halfheartedly, "Stop. Come back. Don't do it."
We are violating the American principle of not allowing the tools of tyrrany to be built in the first place.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I'm reading these questions and they are completely misleading:
"Should the government be able to monitor emails if it prevents future terrorist attacks?"
How much more misleading could it get? At the very least it should read:
"Should the government be able to read YOUR emails in an attempt to find terrorist activity?"
or better yet:
"Would you give up your constitutional rights and the rights of your children and grandchildren to change your chances of dieing in terrorist attack from 1 in 20 million to 1 in 20.1 million?"
These people are just not thinking through the issue. If you asked the question, "Should the president be given the power to track all of the phone calls of his political rivals?" you would get a different response from these people. Yet, that is precisely the power that the president wields now that this program is in place.
Proverbs 21:19
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.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
That article can't seem to make up its mind. First the caption for the first image says, "In the U.S. citizenship test, only 38 per cent of Americans passed [...]", and then below that it says "Although the majority passed, more than a third - 38 per cent - failed [...]". Which one is it? Did 38% fail, or did 38% pass? If Americans don't understand their government then apparently the Brits don't understand numbers, or at least are willing to ignore their meaning if it means a juicier headline.
There's no America left to defend.
You can't make a wrong right with a poll.
In the instant case, they phrased the question wrong. They should have asked "Are you willing to give your government utter and total access to the most intimate details of your life, empowering it to extort you into complying with anything it desires, in order to give terrorists exactly what they seek: the destruction if your freedom?"
PRISM affects far more than just americans. Of course, as they don't vote (not that americans vote mean or will accomplish anything, unless they are called Lester), they will act. That should give with time a big push to foreing search engines, social networks and open source software (specially mobile one)
...that we Brits cling to when we want to feel better about the end of empire and the decline of our military and industrial might.
...whereas anyone who has read Oscar Wilde will know that the reason why the sun never set on the British Empire was because God couldn't trust an Englishman in the dark.
This type of snooping is only practiced in states like the 3rd Reich, the DDR and Northern Korea. US Americans seems to be unaware what extreme risks come with it.
Also, this does not help against terrorism at all. No, not one bit.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
ACLU Petition to Stop Massive Government Spying Program
Please sign that petition. Or Write your Representative or Write your Senators. They are easy enough to find. Seriously. If you aren't telling the people that represent you how wrong, awful, and downright unacceptable the NSA actions are they have no reason to stick their neck out to change it.
Nobody is asking you to fight a war, like previous generations of Americans have. Just sign a petition. Write a letter. It is that easy to improve this country. Whether you think that is true or not, remember that an outcry from a small group of people have altered politics before and it can happen again. The only thing preventing this country from getting better is silence.
A population is easy to control if you keep them poor and ignorant. Mix in some government controlled media to tell the plebes what to think and how to vote and now you have full control without anyone really knowing or caring. The dissidents can be silenced and shunned by the majority as the nationalistic ideals emerge that true patriotism is doing what uncle sam tells you to do.
Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
"We must sacrifice our freedoms, in order to secure our freedoms."
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Maybe they should first define terrorism before polling people about tracking phone use to prevent it. Terrorism used to be things like blowing up subways or flying planes into buildings for a political purpose. Now it has been expanded to all sorts of domestic violence (meaning on our homeland, not in our homes), to get around things like existing laws on surveillance, wiretapping, etc. Just like the RICO laws have been abused by using them against other groups than organized crime, so have the terrorism laws.
Another issue is how are the questions phrased? If asked if tracking people's phone use to prevent another 9/11 is okay, you will probably get a different response than asked if it is okay for the government to monitor your phone conversations to make sure you are not a terrorist. The first is in regards to generic people out there. The second is about you, yourself and implies if you don't have anything to hide, you don't have anything to worry about. But that isn't a sign of a free people, but instead a controlled people.
It was James Madison who said "I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
You are discussing a different issue. This is invasion of privacy from our government not from individual to individual. This is all used for population control by our government. We've moved from a government that is in place to serve the people to one that manipulates and controls them.
Imagine if the Nazi regime had access to this amount of data mining?
"Are you jewish?"
"No"
"What about this tweet- 'Oy Vey'"
"Crap..."
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
You do realize that the NSA is not quite the same thing as your grocer? In particular, you do realize that a major part of the outrage is exactly because the NSA defies being watched? The grocer knows everything about you and you know everything about the grocer, that makes for some symmetry in the power structure. The NSA knows everything about you but prevents you from knowing anything about it. Also you might consider that the typical grocer does not have a police force and an army.
And no, freedom is no illusion. By your standard, dryness is an illusion. Clothes could only be truly dry if we banned water from the planet. You don't need "absolute dryness" in order to have dryness, and you don't need "absolute freedom" to have freedom.
From TFA:
The analysis in this report is based on telephone interviews conducted June 6-9, 2013, among a national sample of 1,004 adults 18 years of age or older living in the continental United States (501 respondents were interviewed on a landline telephone, and 503 were interviewed on a cell phone, including 247 who had no landline telephone).
Is it really reasonable to survey the public's opinion of telephone spying via telephone?
Anonymous my ass, this was planted by some government drone specifically to make the justifiably worried sheeple think its ok.
Well, this is one of those sheeple who doesn't think its ok. Not on this planet,not even in this universe.
When our, and other governments are carrying on such activities in the name of safety, go back to a traitor named Benjamin Franklin, who once said that those who would give up a little liberty for safety, will have neither. Ben wasn't exactly a dummy. As for the traitor part, I expect the King of England considered him a traitor, to be hung where ever he could be found. So were a lot of the other names on our Declaration of Independence.
We have already apparently given up, because it seemed convenient and less hassle to the sheeple to let it happen than to go find somebody (or be that somebody) who would actually do something about what has become in my lifetime, a nearly complete dictatorship simply because it was too much trouble to call the trouble makers out and remove them from public office by whatever means that reduced them to standing on the corner shouting about some subject they aren't qualified to pronounce. If they still sucked air enough to do that.
We now have all these 3 letter agencies that don't have to answer to anybody, not even the president, costing us untold billions, even trillions in productivity interference of the public at large, each justifying their existence on selling this magic thing called safety.
What has this so-called safety got us? Because we are disarmed for the most part (in the name of safety of course), we get the Columbines and Sandy Hook scenes simply because somebody who needed to be contained or stopped long before their thinking became that errant, wasn't stopped with a busted butt or nose when it would have done some good, but today some idiots can't be stopped until they actually DO something, at which point its too late.
I can imagine that 100 years ago, these similar personalities likely would have not made it past their first drink in a bar as they would have been 'educated' right then and there by somebody who did know the difference between right and wrong. But we can't do that today because we'd spend 20 to life in a lock-up for removing such a person from the gene pool before he/she went on a rampage, taking 10 + other lives before somebody decides its time to stop them by whatever means is hanging on the belt, or on the back window gun rack of the pick-up truck.
As for the terrorists, lets all agree that the 2nd amendment says exactly what it says. And let nature take its course, get the law the hell out of judging who's right or wrong in such cases. I'll help them meet those 72 Virginians they are so hell bent on meeting, its absolutely not a problem to me.
So lets hear it from those who do give a shit about freedoms. Pew Research indeed. Figures lie, and liars figure out the stats they way they want them to be, every time. And I think this is one of those times.
Many years ago, when I was a computer science student (1980 or so), I thought a lot about predictions of a loss of privacy due to computerization of record keeping. I postulated an argument similar to yours - perhaps the computerization of all records is merely returning our overgrown towns and cities to the previous status quo, when everyone knew (mostly) everything about everyone else. Then I realized that there was a big difference. In the small town, everyone knows everything about everyone else; its reciprocal. But with widespread electronic record keeping, there will inevitably be a state where a few people (relatively) know just about everything about most people, yet the bulk of the people will know next to nothing about those few. That is the inequity. I think its even more troubling that the mining of these massive quantities of data may be used to justify discrimination and further scrutiny against people who would otherwise not be suspected of evil thoughts. Who will watch the watchers, indeed? If the watchers are all hidden behind secrecy laws, and even the watchers interpretations of laws are secret, what is the basis for the two-way communication of knowledge that is found in a "small town"? How can we agree to be governed by laws that don't mean what we believe them to mean on their face, but which have secret meanings that are used to carry out activities many would believe illegal if those secret interpretations were made public?
Everyone who hates the US is loving this news, just like they cheered when they heard we all have to take off our shoes and have our nuts inspected at airports.
I don't know about that. I live in Missouri on the border with Kansas. Folks around love their guns and hate the government and all that, but oh my are they war hawks and terror haters. They all think "I don't have anything to hide; If it gets them turban headed bad guys I'm in favor of it". The far right in Kansas is in favor of not paying taxes and guns without boarders, but they support both the military and security industrial complexes.
No sigs in BETA. Beta SUCKS.
...to thunderous applause.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
From my daily interactions with lots of customers, I venture to say that most people under the age of 50 don't even have a landline phone at home.Most people are using cellphones exclusively and it's illegal for pollsters to call them. This leaves out vast numbers of people that will never be asked their opinion on anything. Therefore, I don't give polls much credibility.
"a new study by Pew Research [and paid for by the security people] suggests that most U.S. citizens think it's okay".
Who paid for this study. What was the nature of this study. What questions were asked and in what order. How was the sample population chosen.
AccountKiller