> There are significant partisan differences in views of the government's program to obtain call logs and Internet communication. Democrats are more likely to approve, by 49% to 40%. Independents (34% vs. 56%) and Republicans (32% to 63%) are much more likely to disapprove than approve.
It's too bad they didn't bother to separate "technologically clueless" from the "technologically clueful", which would probably speak volumes.
That's a fruitless way of approaching the problem. It plays into the political divides of "us" vs "them." By trying to establish groups of people as "clueless" about a topic, it just reinforces the feelings of, "they just don't get it" or "they wouldn't think that if they just knew better." All sides of an issue believe exactly that.
This reminds me to read a book that talks about this: "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion," by Jonathan Haidt. Maybe someone else has read it and can comment.
I'd imagine technologically clueless people have more of an expectation of privacy from internet communications than technologically clueful people that know that know that random sysadmins at dozens of companies have access to your data.
I wouldn't be surprised if some youngsters these days weren't aware that there'd been a Windows 3, while still being technologically savvy generally. Possibly 95 as well, although they could probably still get the order right just based on the pattern at that point.
And yet, this Pew Research poll from two days ago:
> "Overall, 56 percent of Americans consider the NSA’s accessing of telephone call records of millions of Americans through secret court orders “acceptable,” while 41 percent call the practice “unacceptable.”" [1]
The Pew question only specifies phone data monitoring, while the Gallup question mentions both phone and internet data. I'm sure the poll-question-phrasing-savvy can provide some more insight on the differences.
How much of the difference can be attributed to people's minds changing in response to further revelations, the quality of the government's response, the opinions of their peers, etc?
Well we've always known that both the wording and sequence of questions can affect poll results. I don't know by how much exactly but the effect has been seen to be significant enough to mislead pundits on seemingly every side of a given issue until right before an election.
The key takeaway is this: "Twenty-one percent of Americans disapprove of the government's actions, but say there could be circumstances in which it would be right for the government to carry out such a program, yielding a combined total of 58% of all Americans who either approve or could theoretically approve under certain circumstances."
I'd bet there are a lot of people in the administration who dislike the idea of surveillance in general, but approve of surveillance in this particular case because of the specifics of the situation. Not saying the belief is justified, but rather that this is always how such beliefs are justified. See the movie The Siege.
And if you look at poll data from similar scandals in 2006, a very healthy (about half) of people who objected now, when a Democrat is in charge, thought it was awesome then, and vice versa.
If you were an intelligence professional, how could you not look at this and shrug? Is there really a message from the public when about half the people who seem to care apparently care only for the political hay they can make of it, and about half the rest just don't know enough to know whether they approve or not?
To me, that's a real negative of the secrecy -- it sets up low-information scenarios where the public can't have a real opinion, and so is easily discounted by insiders, leading to yet more secrecy and potential abuses.
Well, nothing demonstrates that they're the same people. Strictly, there could be a chunk of the populace that shifts their allegiance to whoever is more spy-happy.
Over the past few years every company listed in the Prism scandal has done everything possible to ink information out of us, including the information we were giving them by using their service. It seems to me like over the past decade or so more of these companies applications have been developed around the information gathering protocol. Back in 09 when I left facebook it was because at the time I was getting friended by people that were just random from my neighborhood and it sorta hit me that I bet facebook could pin point my childhood address by looking at my friends and other data. Its all creepy. But its all worth a ton of money to the government. In my opinion, facebook or google wouldn't have the value it has today without the information sharing. I thought that was a given before this scandal broke out.
My point is that I am afraid that the big tech companies were acting as robots for the government and relying on developing technology around the surveillance program, rather than innovation.
A more important question is "How passionately do you disapprove?"
For example, even though most Americans believe in tougher gun restrictions, it's not a high priority in how they vote. That meant politicians weren't going to spend any of their political capital fighting for that issue.
I suspect privacy isn't a major voting issue with many Americans, so this number is probably even weaker in terms of swaying politicians. It's politically easier for a politician to be strong on security with spying than to stand up for privacy and later have it revealed that information about an attack could have been known through these spying methods.
Edit: topic clarification and paragraph structure.
to speculate a bit, the 49% of democrats who approve must be viewing this whole kerfuffle through the partisan lens that it's an attack on the administration, rather than as an attack on the Patriot Act and other post-9/11 apparatus that, at least in part, predate the current administration.
I think the converse is true, and the partisan effect is increasing disapproval because of conservatives who want to believe that the Obama government is inept and overreaching.
> democrats who approve must be viewing this whole kerfuffle through the partisan lens that it's an attack on the administration
Maybe. Maybe the poll sucks, maybe asking the questions differently would've made a difference, maybe taking the poll later would've changed the results. Maybe there's a characteristic difference in thought between people who tend to vote democratic and the other groups. Maybe democrats tend to trust that the Obama administration isn't making use of this program in a way that directly or deliberately targets American citizens. Maybe republicans view the program through a partisan lens, viewing it as yet another totalitarian act on the part of Obama, rather than a continuation of post-9/11 national security policy from the Bush years.
There's plenty of possible explanations, and very limited data.
37% approve, which seems pretty high. I wonder what the response would have been if it the question wasn't phrased as "the government obtained records", but as "the government obtained your records".
This is why a majority of polls are absolutely useless, you can get the answers you want by asking the questions in certain ways.
Also, what people say they'd do and what they actually do are two completely different things. You could ask people if they are sick of hearing about a tabloid scandal thats been running in the press for a few weeks and they'll say they are, yet any publication that runs the story has their circulation numbers go up.
As the saying goes: "Lies, damned lies, and statistics".
What does it matter if "most Americans" disapprove, from any standpoint? It doesn't mean they won't vote in the same bastards that did this to us in the first place. And, philosophically, "A lynch mob is majority rule stripped of its fancy trappings and its facade of respectability." If 90% of Americans said they're ok with the programs, would that make it alright to violate the rights of the other 10%?
I thought the programs that were in the news had nothing to do with listening in on phone calls. This poll also has nothing to do with the question of listening to phone calls.
Listening on a call and collecting metadata are two extremely different things. I'm personally opposed to both but they are miles apart from each other and shouldn't be confused.
You're right, that part is incorrectly phrased, but it's also not really the point. Change "listening in on" to "collecting metadata about" if you like. It's still the same problem.
To me it's significant that 37% of Americans support a program that's undoubtedly unconstitutional. I wonder how much the poll participants actually knew about PRISM. Either they support it out of ignorance or for political reasons -- or there's widespread, fundamental misunderstanding of the federal Constitution.
I'd take this further and do a poll of people to find out how many people agree with individual provisions of the Constitution. Like literally show people one clause/section at a time, have them read it and ask them what parts they agree and disagree with.
Very surprised that Democrats would be in favor... perhaps because it's a Democrat president in office that's presiding over these programs? I can't think of any other rational reason.
It's possible, but it's probably more indirect. E.g. the Democratic leadership is playing damage control, and the media that panders to Democrats plays along, so the Democratic public see the played-down version in the media they watch.
Public opinion is a double edged sword. Be careful when you grasp onto it. One terrorist attack and it swings back the other way in a hurry. If you truly believe that these programs violate the fourth amendment, then it doesn't matter what the majority thinks, your individual rights are protected from the majority by the constitution.
I would venture to guess on this issue those voting in favor of PRISM and such programs are not more informed. They are most likely unaware of the consequences of such programs and what it means about our government and how they view their constituents and their power.
I agree I would have thought well over 70% would have found this horrific. Yet we have been "wussified" so much that many people feel anything that "keeps them safe" is worth it. So the terror propaganda has worked.....
This is enough to make me suspicious of the poll numbers. This has a very partisan slant. The Democrats are, to a small extent, rallying around a Democratic president, while Republican respondents are doing the opposite. The numbers would likely be flipped around, had this NSA scandal been exposed during the previous (Republican) president's administration.
It's too bad they didn't bother to separate "technologically clueless" from the "technologically clueful", which would probably speak volumes.