New Poll Finds Mixed Support for Wiretaps

[cal04]

Americans are willing to tolerate eavesdropping without warrants to fight terrorism, but are concerned that the aggressive antiterrorism programs championed by the Bush administration are encroaching on civil liberties, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

In a sign that public opinion about the tradeoffs between national security and individual rights is nuanced and remains highly unresolved, responses to questions about the administration's eavesdropping program varied significantly depending on how the questions were worded, underlining the importance of the effort by the White House this week to define the issue on its terms. The poll, conducted as President Bush defended his surveillance program in the face of criticism from Democrats and some Republicans that it is illegal, found that Americans are willing to give the administration some latitude for its surveillance program if they believe it is intended to protect them. Fifty-three percent of the respondents said they supported eavesdropping without warrants "in order to reduce the threat of terrorism."

The results suggested that Americans' view of the program depends in large part on whether they perceive it as a bulwark in the fight against terrorism, as Mr. Bush has sought to cast it, or a question of unnecessary and unwarranted infringement on civil liberties, as critics have said. In one striking finding, respondents overwhelmingly supported government monitoring of e-mail messages and telephone calls directed at "Americans the government is suspicious of;" they overwhelmingly opposed the same kind of surveillance if it was aimed at "ordinary Americans."

Mr. Bush, at a White House press conference on Thursday, twice used the phrase "terrorist surveillance program" to describe an operation in which the administration has eavesdropped on telephone calls and other communications like e-mail that it says could involve Al Qaeda operatives overseas talking to Americans. Critics said the administration could conduct such surveillance while still getting prior court approval, as spelled out in a 1978 law intended to guard against governmental abuses.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/27/politics/27poll.html?hp&ex=1138338000&en=34b99413dcd9a25e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Proud2BAmurkin]

1. Yet the douchebag writer finds good news for Little Lord Pissypants. LOL

:rofl:

fuckin asshat

[jschurchin]

2. Terrorist Surveillance Program????

So I guess we Americans are now terrorists because we think you are the second coming of Hitler.
Anybody who would think that, even for a minute, this is about terrorism has their head up their ass. The administration wants to know what the internet community is saying and thinking or planning for this administration, period.
You are in violation of the law Mr. Bush and your ass needs to be in Levinworth.:mad:

[ladjf]

3. Anyone who isn't opposed to warrentless spying just doesn't

understand what it means.

[radio4progressives]

4. Please change the Subject table and replace Wire Taps with Domestic Spying

the public doesn't get the wire taps , if they're mostly on wire-LESS communications equipment.

but since this really about Domestic Spying, notice how the media, the WH and even Congress avoiding the term Domestic Spying ?

see what i mean? ;)

it's a difference with an important distinction...