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According To YouGov Poll, Snowden Support Declining Among Americans
eldavojohn writes "A recent poll from the YouGov consisting of one thousand responses shows that Snowden's support among Americans has shifted. Now, according to the poll, more Americans think he did the wrong thing rather than the right thing when asked: 'Based on what you've heard, do think Snowden's leak of top-secret information about government surveillance programs to the media was the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do?' The results and breakdown are available online (PDF). Without getting into racial or political breakdowns, the results now show that 38% say he did the wrong thing, 33% say he did the right thing and 29% remain undecided about the results of his actions. Instead of charging the populace into action Snowden may be facing apathy at best and public disapproval at worst."
How about support for prosecuting James Clapper?
From The Q&A Snowden had with readers of The Guardian:
Q: What would you say to others who are in a position to leak classified information that could improve public understanding of the intelligence apparatus of the USA and its effect on civil liberties?
A: This country is worth dying for.
Despite this latest poll, I still think Snowden was right. Future generations will hail him as the hero he is. And that's coming from a non-American...
This isn't terribly shocking. If the last several years have told us anything it's that the American people don't really care if the government abuses its authority. Remember the Nixon scandal? That guy tried to wiretap a *single office* and the only reason that he wasn't impeached is because he resigned before congress could file the impeachment paperwork. Yet, when the government started wiretapping citizens years ago due to "national security" reasons, there was no such uproar. Sure, there were a few people that wanted the president impeached, but there was no real support for it. It's no surprise that the recent news of the wiretapping being larger than we thought has fallen on deaf ears.
Every single issue over the last couple decades has been met with more and more apathetic responses. The problem is going to get far worse before it gets better.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
That's exactly the kind of psy-op that has been going on for weeks now in discussion forums all around the internets.
Slowly, but steadily comments pop up that put Snowden in a slightly bad light, for no good reason at all. Depending on the target audience of the forum, it's anything from "because 'MURICA" to what you just said.
Doesn't anyone notice that?
That's also why such programs are so enormously dangerous. Who in the world would know best how to manipulate public opinion? Only those whose sole reason of existance it is to peek into other peoples lives ... so even when the programs are known (which happens very rarely), we can't fight it because they have already become too powerful.
...when you condider the 24/7 anti-Snowdon propaganda in the US-media.
Shooting the messenger has a long tradition.
Not just spin doctors. Commenters on the internets. Public opinion is made today by manipulating virtual peer groups on social media, discussion boards, online newspaper comment sections, newsgroups etc.
Is this really a surprise? Most sections of the media have spent the last month or so trying to portray Snowden as a traitor, who's weakened the national security of several countries, endangered inter-governmental cooperation (because now they know they were all spying on each other rather than just assuming they were), is possibly a bit weird and is now "palling around" with Russian and various South American states who are "enemies of teh freedoms".
In that context, of course peoples' opinions are going to start to shift.
Wow does this headline have things reversed.
Edward Snowden has been subjected to a month long attack campaign. This started with go after his girlfriend for being a pole dancer. It followed with other negative news stories and criticism by major politicians. From there there was a federal espionage indictment. He then had to flee the country and the USA has gone to extraordinary lengths putting pressure on countries to isolate him. The media has been mainly complicit. And after all that is approval rating has dropped a mere 5 points.
That's the story.
now that they know they are being monitored and showing him favor might get them on a watch list.
http://interserver.net/
By continuously shifting the attention away in the media from the human rights violations to what Snowdon is doing now (sitting on an airport) or did (show that the government is acting outside the law) people get bored. And especially since the violations of Americans' own rights is covered by law (that is implemented in a completely unaccountable way, though) the American people forget even more. But the European people - not their politicians, of course - are furious. If one chooses to be a diplomat or a politician, one knows there will be eavesdropping. But when I write a letter to someone, a foreign government that is supposed to be an allie should stay the f**k out of my mail: paper and electronic alike. Of course, I'm also blaming the United Kingdom. The western world induces terrorism itself by performing terrorism in other parts of the world. Conquer and divide. Give them weapons, let them fight each other as long as our companies' interests are ensured. Shoot people on flimsy evedence with a drone, without a trial, in countries we're not at war with. And the bloddy mess (innocent civilians) is a don't care. They are not our boys, but theirs. No wonder people start to fight back. People like Snowdon and Bradley Manning are necessary to show that politicians commit war crimes, blackmail countries and violate every possible law that's about humanity. That is because they act not in our interests (the public, the believed to be free people) but in the interest of big companies. Who also happen to own the media. And there goes your information, your well informed opinion and as a result yout humanity. The trend that you're seeing in this article is indifference. Governments are lobby clubs that lie to their people and allies alike. And they succeed.
It is now official. YouGov has confirmed: Edward Snowden support is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered internet community community when CNN confirmed that support for whistleblowers has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all important people. Coming on the heels of a recent Pew survey which plainly states that...
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Wow does this headline have things reversed.
Edward Snowden has been subjected to a month long attack campaign. This started with go after his girlfriend for being a pole dancer. It followed with other negative news stories and criticism by major politicians. From there there was a federal espionage indictment. He then had to flee the country and the USA has gone to extraordinary lengths putting pressure on countries to isolate him. The media has been mainly complicit. And after all that is approval rating has dropped a mere 5 points.
That's the story.
Submitter here and I'm afraid I'm going to have to outright disagree with you. I just don't see your events lining up with this recent drop in support. You're talking about months old efforts to discredit him that seemed to have little effect on his popularity. If you read the HuffPo article you'll see:
Much of the drop in support for Snowden's actions since the earlier poll appears to have taken place among Republicans, who were divided, 37 percent to 37 percent, on whether Snowden did the right thing in the previous poll, but in the latest poll said by a 44 percent to 29 percent margin that he did the wrong thing.
As fallout from his revelations ruin our foreign relations I think you'll see a lot of conservatives switch positions. This is simply a more plausible explanation. US as a power player in world politics and economics is simply higher on some people's agendas then their own damned privacy.
My work here is dung.
That's exactly the kind of psy-op that has been going on for weeks now in discussion forums all around the internets.
It is standard propaganda tactics to describe people as unreliable attention whores to place blame on them. It works in various ways.
For example, take the fable "the boy who cried wolf". It is not a tale about a boy lying, but a tale about blaming a boy for the failure of others to build fences to protect the sheep.
Maybe if the NSA can secretly record information on billions of people, then rigging a yougov poll would be child's play. 4chan does it about once a month, like how they got kim jong un times people's choice award of 2012.
Rocket Surgeon.
'Based on what you've heard ...
All this tells us is that people will change their opinion depending on what "the news" tells them. Spin a story one way and you've got a hero. Put a different emphasis on it and you create a villain.
Maybe if the truth came out, and was laid before the public with no interpretation, value judgements or commentary they would be in a position to make up their own mind (sometimes I just can't help but laugh as I'm writing this stuff) and come to a conclusion of their own.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
When the story first broke, I believed Snowden was a hero. This was when the leaked information was regarding legally-questionable, at best, domestic spying on it's own citizens.
The leaks since then have shown that Snowden isn't just "blowing the whistle", he's leaking whatever details he could carry on whatever electronic intelligence programs he could get his hands on. It's not as if it should have come as a big shock to him (or anybody) that the NSA spies on the communications of foreign countries; that's kind of what we created the NSA for, and it's what we pay intelligence agencies for in general.
Apathy is far worse than disapproval. It would show that the American public has, indeed, degraded into a few hundred million Homer and Marge Simpsons who only care about consumption. If apathy with regard to the Snowden case were indeed to become the prevailing sentiment, it would show that the American public DOES merit a surveillance state. Remember: every nation gets the leadership it merits.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Blah blah blah
Snowden is an attention whore
He's an attention whore for all the RIGHT REASONS, as opposed to the sad sack culture that we have now e,g what is Britney Spears wearing this week? who fucking cares, or should that read, who with a brain fucking cares?
The proper channels do not work. There is no "right" way to be a whistleblower. The systems are in place to define any possible effective attempt to whistleblow something this big as "wrong".
Push polls are a sign of fear. They're trying to give the impression that protestors are isolated and thus should be afraid of stepping out line by protesting. If people really didn't care, then you wouldn't need to keep the program secret, and continue to lie about it.
The details of the economist poll I could not find, only the claimed single question, which is rarely the full story, there's always pre-questions to remove the 'don't know'.
For example the first poll 'Pew', was heavily loaded with pre-questions to push the person to accept surveillance:
e..g.
"Did you follow reports about the government collecting emails and other online activities directly from large internet companies to track foreign suspects in terror investigations very closely,"
See the "to track foreign suspects in terror investigations" part?
If I told you the surveillance is everyone for everything (which it is), that's different from tracking a few terror suspects (which it isn't). The loaded questions were only able to just take it above 50%.
If they're pushing, then its fear.
Life for most of us is already complex enough. We know we are in a tiny sinking life raft with an insane incompetent captain on a hostile ocean filled with sharks. If someone then starts to show just how leaky the boat is by poking at its holes... well, they can expect a punch in the face.
Those that are upset by all the revelations are the people who thought the captain was competent and sane, the ocean was our natural home, the raft an ocean lines and the sharks to be dolphins.
In reality of course, the spying while much worse then what the dreamers thought is probably in reality far less effective. If it worked, they would be capturing more terrorists and criminals. Most of us in the real world DREAM of an effective secret shadow government ruled by aliens, it would mean that for once somebody intelligent was in charge. Or at least something with a plan. It doesn't matter that the plan is to harvest your organs, at least it is a goddamn plan.
Take the attitude in the US towards veterans. The average American KNOWS the average US veteran is a war criminal. Plenty of examples even very clear once like the Mai Lai masacre. Point out however that just because someone is a vet, they are therefor NOT automatically worthy of worship and they will spout all sorts of nonsense, even going so far as liberals stating that orders are orders.
The same people who cry foul (justly so) over Japan worhshipping its war criminals, can't see the tree in their own eye.
Because it rocks the boat. And people HATE that.
Ideally people want today to be followed by tomorrow and for it to be not to much worse.
If you read about daily life in the death camps of the holocaust, the normalcy of it all is the most shocking. Life went on, even if all around you it didn't. The same is true of children raised in the most appalling conditions. Humans adapt, to ANYTHING. It allows us to survive. Both Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett have written about this, we all need to be slightly drunk all the time because if we ever saw the world sober, we would lose our minds.
Think about this, while you are reading me prattling on, children are being hurt and killed, are dying of hunger RIGHT now and all your are doing is wishing you had mod points to mod me up/down. YOU (and I, because I am prattling on while I could be saving someone) can't deal with the real world all the time.
And snowden tried to force us to do so, to see the man behind the curtain and we hate him for it. Well not hate, just wish he would go away so we can pretend the world ain't that bad after all.
Want proof? Red nose day. A british charity event were they gather money through comedy. It is VERY succesful. Because it offsets the horrors for which the money is needed with plenty of entertainment and happy endings to make us forget how horrid it all is. Charity organizers know this, you show a BIT of misery, the photogenic part because if you just show thousands of dead children, nobody would donate anything because nobody would watch. Show however a story of how a child went from carrying water all day to sitting in a happy classroom and you can't accept the donations fast enough.
Snowden showed us the Auswitz that is our privacy and we can't cope. It is to much, to far. He didn't just rock the boat, he nuked it out of existence. And have us nothing in return. He didn't give us any tools to stop Prism. EVERYONE is in favor. The only ones speaking out against it so far are SOME tea party members and socialist semi-dictators. In Europe NOBODY has spoken out against it.
We can now either face the full machinations of the system OR wish Snowden went away.
I am betting on the latter. Because I am a old middle class man who frankly has every bit of fight beaten out of him. I used to be an activist for a local union, then had people who fought me every way demand that they get all the benefits they didn't fight for... let someone else fight this fight. I am done and frankly I can see why some people walk f
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If companies knew ALL backdoors to their products, there would be far fewer backdoors. Because companies are generally not dicks. Agreed?
NSA is 'the backdoor company'. They work on finding backdoors. It is not surprising a company doesn't know about a backdoor/vulnerability in their product while NSA does.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Nonsense.
Zealots, psychotics, and sociopaths that have nothing to live for are willing to "give their lives for what they believe in". The simple willingness to die for a cause bears NO weight on the moral quality of the cause, nor on the worthiness of the person.
History is littered with nutballs who are willing to give their lives for 'a cause'. Unfortunately, they usually convince others to join them, and invariably some non-nutballs die too.
I know it's all charmingly enthusiastic and romantic to be zealous about a cause but personally I commend American apathy. As we've recently been witness to (repeatedly) the world is FULL of people who are so partisan they are willing to DIE for their local interpretation of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Is that commendable?
We rightly mock the Byzantines for the Nika riots (in which tens of thousands of people were slain in street violence over the span of a week, largely over which color team they supported). We stand aghast at today's news about a Brazilian referee stabbing a player because he wouldn't leave the pitch (and then the crowd QUARTERED him and left his head on a stake in the center of the pitch). They certainly "cared" a lot about something, so much so that they were willing as a consensual group to murder a man. Shall we canonize them for their dedication to their beliefs?
America has been accurately characterized as the 'lifeboat from history'. America is where a Jew and an Arab can live next to each other in peace, not brainwashed from birth to destroy each other because of some argument between scruffy goat-herders hundreds of years ago. America is where a Catholic girl can marry a Muslim guy simply because they love each other, and not be bred into fervent hatred because of the faiths of their families. The ESSENCE of this is - dare I say it - an apathy to the fervently-held beliefs and concepts that their parents and homelands were willing to die and kill for.
Partisans of both extremes like to mock what they call the 'apathetic' center, mainly because we won't (whether the reason is intellectual or mere laziness) join their crazy-train of vituperation, spitting at the "other guys" simply because they're "not us".
Well, I'm sorry - I refuse to buy your motivational screed that I "must" care about this or that. I refuse to give a shit about whatever happens to get you all riled up, simply because you're agitated. I'll cheerfully go about my life, earn a living, and celebrate my "apathy" because that's one of the things that make this country great.
I'd stake my life on it.
-Styopa
Right or Left, we choose to disbelieve math and science when it doesn't fit our view of the world.
Disbelieving an internet poll is another matter entirely.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
What about
'Based on what you've heard, do think government surveillance programs was the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do?'
Yup. The media have made this about Snowden rather than about what he revealed.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I think the reason he went to HK then RU is because they are the only countries with the balls to stand up to a US extradition request.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
You Americans deserve what you're about to get.
What they're about to get is nothing to celebrate, and should motivate one towards resisting the trend. The rest of the world either will get the same shortly thereafter, or is getting it already. The difficulty is that a group of persons must interpret the limits expounded in their constitution, and are not doing so well at it. One is reminded of the comparable commands in Orwell's Animal Farm, and their weasely reinterpretation:
And so forth...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Maybe the slide in the polls for Snowden isn't apathy (although I'm sure that's some of it), but instead all of these new leaks. At first he was a whistle blower telling the American people that their government was spying on them and he had wide support. But now, the leaks are about foreign governments and people don't think that is right.
Here is the question. When Snowden first went public, both he and the NSA said that he didn't have the kind of information that has been leaked lately that has discredited him. So, either he and the NSA both lied or one of them is telling the truth and the other is intentionally leaking non-critical information to make him look bad.
While I have no reason to trust Snowden. I have even less to trust a government who a month before he went public proclaimed that it was not gathering intelligence information on the American public. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
He did tremendous damage to Obama's reputation ... there may be more fallout of the next few years.
Yeah, there is more to come. We know this based on the NATO-wide blockade against Evo Morales's sovereign immunity and Biden's personal intervention (threats) in Ecuador. Whatever the secrets are, it goes to the highest levels. The only reason for a politician to take a war-like stance against a neutral country like Bolivia is if they're likely to personally lose their office over the matter.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Snowden is a Hero. And Americans are stupid to believe the propaganda their TVs tout at them. And by stating this I probably will be unable to travel to USA just like those two British tourists where not able to travel there.
The media is a PR machine for the government and big business so Snowden can't get a fair shake in the news (at least in the US). A lot of Americans can't grasp the idea that someone might want to live outside of the US. Hearing this guy might end up living in places like Russia, Venezuela and Nicaragua will make people think he must be evil because those are evil places full of evil people.
Too many Americans are nationalistic and not patriotic. They love the shit the government shovels them.
Just so. Given the parade of elected officials calling Snowden a traitor, and given the overtly hostile press that Snowden has received from broadcast and cable, I would say that his numbers are holding up remarkably well.
Because then he would have been a "coward" for being anonymous, and probably "not standing up for what he believes in". He did what he had to to get his info taken as seriously as possible. He essentially sacrificed himself for a higher cause. The thing is, he can still do more 'good' by remaining free, so there is no problem with him doing his best to avoid US law enforcement.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
Not as simple as a direct dictatorship but a functional level of control is still possible.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Seeing how some people have no concerns at all about metadata, wouldn't everyone be better off if a law was passed forcing ALL metadata to be accessible publicly? Then we could crowd source the search for terrorists and really win. There is no way that info is detailed enough to be mis-used (or so we have been told). If it's really that harmless then we should all see.
... an obscure poll from yougov is anywhere relevant now.
i would rather want to know the exact amount (in petabytes) yougov hands over to nsa daily. could explain this propaganda stunt. hey it's enemy of democracy day!
all this makes one want to puke, doesn't it?
I became interested in the history of code breaking and surveillance in the late 1970s, even before The Puzzle Palace permanently breached the NSA's public anonymity.
I don't get the public furor because there's nothing new here: what Snowden revealed is just a logical extension of how this program has always operated, as documented since way back for anyone who wanted to know. It has always been part of the anonymity construct that the NSA could purport (or purport by implication) that it operated within the groove of democratic principles, up to a point. The old relationship with the British (I'll watch yours, if you watch mine) was always a burden, but I guess that burden must have been manageable for a time.
Once COTS technology (Cisco, Nortel, Lucent, Alcatel, Juniper) begins to outpace the astrobuck edge, the NSA is forced by brutal practicalities to review and revise their anonymity construct. Just how much can be exchanged through a stiff-upper-lip tea service?
At this point, the NSA's democratic cloak is outright risible: any foreign person, anyone whose patterns of contact with such people is vaguely suspicious (there has never been a shortage of suspicion where suspicion greases operational desires) and anyone who crosses paths in any way with this substantial kernel of the vaguely suspicious, citizenship be damned. We're more than halfway along the spectrum of seven degrees.
Suppose we apply the principles of differential cryptanalysis to this interesting social network. Suppose there is some American citizen not yet trawled by this social graph of chance connection. What's the least amount of suspicion one must inject at some chosen suspicion-coloured node of this graph for a tentacle to slop out of the bucket to engulf the arbitrary citizen of the moment? Once engulfed, does this person ever escape this webbing ever again on principles of liberty and freedom or is this person's only democratic salvation to fall beneath some metric of cost/benefit in keeping his or her node active in the vast suspicion graph? How much easier is it for a person to be bumped back into this mesh once you've been on it before? Does that scarlet letter ever fall off?
I doubt there's anyone in America whose nose is so clean that ten minutes of brow-drenched pretext-manufacture by some nearby NSA staffer with any prospect of future promotion wouldn't serve to lasso this person onto the suspicion list by some ready-to-hand agency criterion (a clean nose for this purpose is mainly established by not getting out much except on Sunday morning, not using email, and never answering your telephone when pestered by a wrong number).
That's pretty much the minimal operation capability they would settle for, no matter which democratic cover story of the day hits the news cycle. I doubt they ever expected that a program as large as this could maintain cover of darkness indefinitely. So the real response and public optics is mainly for consumption inside the Faraday cage: the Snowden meme is not one they wish to see take root among their own.
It's a basic tenant of military or police training to punish the group on the pretext of individual lapses, failure, or sloth until the group is conditioned to self police. Wouldn't be surprised if everyone in the entire agency is working unpaid overtime on invented files (as in The Firm) until Snowden is brought to Faraday justice. I get the internal furor loud and clear.
Instead of charging the populace into action Snowden may be facing apathy at best and public disapproval at worst.
I'm pretty sure he's facing far worse than apathy and public disapproval.
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
Stop pretending you're doing anything but attacking the messenger who challenges your set world view. I'm not a kid, I just didn't sell out with age.
Let me explain how these things work, because you seem to be like some of the people I meet regularly (you know, that thing that happens when you get out of your seat), who thinks they know everything, but fail miserably to understand what they know.
Clapper goes before congress, lies his ass off when asked a direct question. A lowly NSA employee, with strong political views, and access to hardware beyond his clearance, finds this objectionable. So much so that he takes a bunch of laptops filled with damning documents that directly contradict what Clapper has told congress. He flies to Hong Kong and sets up an interview with Greenwald of the Guardian, and he spills the beans. Everybody is shocked, or is feigning shock. The US allegedly tries to get this NSA employee extradited, but fail to fill out the most basic information, and the Hong Kong administration denies the request.
Did you ever wonder why they did not fill out this very basic form correctly? I thought not. They have an interest in not getting their hands on the NSA employee, not yet. They need him around, because they know that his story will take up headlines just as much as the actual substance in the case. They have an interest in dangling him in front of your eyes while they work to spin the leaks to their advantage.
The NSA employee tries to flee Hong Kong aided by another attention whore, Assange, and a Wikileaks lawyer. They get stranded in Moscow (predictably, since his passport has been revoked), and now the spin doctors have it under control. They have a target they can keep taking shots at in the media whenever a new side of the case is revealed. The media will spend equal time on Snowden and on the leaks, and that is to the advantage of the people who try to hide these things. Every new page in the Snowden saga is detrimental to the bigger picture, because it's a page spent on redundant drivel, not on the substance of the issue. If they arrest him, the novelty of his situation vanishes, and the case goes back to being front page news without him as a distraction, and that is not in their interest, yet.
Contrast that with just leaking the documents to Greenwald, anonymously or by delaying identification until needed. There would be no NSA employee stranded in Moscow for the media to focus on. There would be no person cult arising around Snowden. We'd be able to focus completely on this massive turd of a surveillance scandal.
So yeah, we don't need Snowden right now, because his existence spawns discussions like this, when we should be talking about affecting change in the system we so clearly see is rotten, corrupt and fucking dangerous. We need the media's help, but we can't control it, the focus goes where the most page hits are, and that is with extraordinary people, to the detriment of the bigger picture.
... whatever