Majority of Americans OK With Warrantless Internet Surveillance (ap.org)

An anonymous reader writes: A new poll conducted by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research gathered opinions on the U.S. government's surveillance of internet communications. The poll found that a majority of Americans, 56%, were in favor of warrantless surveillance. 28% explicitly opposed it. 67% of Republicans and 55% of Democrats supported the warrantless surveillance, while only 40% of Independents supported it. Americans under 30 supported warrantless surveillance much less than older Americans. Further, "The poll finds that for most Americans, safety concerns trump civil liberties at least some of the time. More than half — 54 percent — say it's sometimes necessary for the government to sacrifice freedoms to fight terrorism, while 45 percent think that's not necessary. On a more general level, 42 percent say it's more important for the government to ensure Americans' safety than to protect citizens' rights, while 27 percent think rights are more important and 31 percent rate both equally."

Comments

It's a false tradeoff

[gavron]

Security expert Bruce Schneier has been explaining for years that the "tradeoff" between security and liberty is a false one.
It's put out there by politicians to justify a war on liberties.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/...

Any "survey" or "poll" that requires comparing the two or claiming you must give up one to have the other has begged this question and is already false.

E

Re:USA entering a brave new age of stupidity

[King_TJ]

I agree that it's depressing that someone like Trump can do so well in the polls, saying the things he says.
But at the same time, I don't quite understand the relevancy of the points you listed here?

*Everyone must have a job even if the things you're good at have been replaced by bots or outsourced to the Chinese. If you don't have a job you are derided as a scumbag

America has a long history of encouraging people to get/keep a job. Traditionally, it's been the honorable thing to do, if one wants to be a productive member of society and not mooch of of the labor of others. Technology ALWAYS winds up changing around the type of labor worth paying humans to do. Historically though, it also winds up increasing the total number of available jobs. (For example, just think how many new careers were created with the advent of television. Think how many new jobs were created by the personal computer.) There is always some pain during periods of transition -- but people are remarkably good at adapting, if we're pushed up against a wall and forced to do so. We lost a LOT of jobs in manufacturing to the Chinese and others -- but there are still plenty of things to be done. Might need a little training or education to do them, but it's possible.

*Tremendous poverty, everyone brushes it under the table because everybody is so opposed to the idea of people getting a free lunch

I disagree with this assertion. Most people I know consider poverty a real problem. But the idea that government forcibly taking a portion of everyone's income to help these people out bothers me. Charity, by definition, is voluntary. If you can't comprehend or accept this, you may as well advocate all the poor holding up everyone else at gunpoint whenever they need something.

*Nobody wants to give up driving their big automatic pickup to work, even if it can be proven they are causing global warming.

Perhaps so, but can you blame them? Big pickup trucks aren't cheap. How will people be compensated for the loss of use of expensive vehicles they purchased, if you decide they're no longer allowed due to the climate change issues they help cause? The truth is, we don't yet have better solutions for the need for cars and trucks on our roads, or else we'd already all be using them.

*Nobody wants to give up their silly pea-shooter in case of Government aggression even if the government has much better toys that would make very light work of someone toting the said pea-shooter

This VASTLY oversimplifies things. People want guns for personal protection against other ever-day people who might initiate acts of violence. They also want guns for sport. Many of my friends enjoy going to a shooting range on weekends, and one even enjoys making his own ammo in his basement. When it comes to even government, situations vary. If we're talking about some sort of war against the government? Then, no... a fighter jet or tank is going to outmatch your rifle or handgun. But what about the no-knock warrants served in the middle of the night? The courts have upheld instances where police officers were shot by homeowners in these situations. The police knowing people could be armed helps level the playing field so they're kept honest.

*Nobody complains about the government pissing away trillions of the aforementioned toys while people starve and die of curable illnesses.

Sure they do! ALL the time. But you can throw dollar after dollar at a disease and still not have a cure. Often, money isn't really the primary barrier to solutions. We've had groups collecting billions of dollars over decades to find a cure for cancer but still no cure to be seen.

Re:Not a zero-sum game -- and not that simple

[ZeroWaiteState]

I read their study methodology. A couple of things:

• They interviewed about 1000 people, which is supposed to be statistically representative of roughly 250 million people.
• Of the people they requested to complete the survey, roughly 2/3rd's of them did it via the web, which would have been by far the quickest way to do a survey, even with a smartphone. 1/3 instead chose to complete the survey by a telephone call.
• There was no information regarding whether there was a correlation between people who were okay with computer surveillance and people who don't use a computer. Given the way the study was conducted, it is reasonable to assume a number of people who responded were not comfortable using a computer to do the survey.
• They broke their respondents into two age groups, one 18-30 and another 30-anything else, and then averaged positive opinions across the entire age range. So, we don't know if people age 60+ had a different opinion on the matter. We are left to infer that they don't.
• They only selected households with at least 2 adults, so single adults that weren't cohabiting weren't consulted.
• The question, as framed, asked about "government analysis of internet activities and communications", which is more vague and has less emotional content than "surveillance". Given that their admitted margin of sampling error is 4% (not even taking into account subgroups, which is pretty much the point of the article), differences in wording becomes relevant.

The only thing I saw worth noting in the article is that Americans find terrorists to be scary.