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Many Americans Accept NSA Surveillance
(Angus Reid Global Scan) - Many adults in the United States see nothing wrong with the domestic electronic surveillance program initiated by their federal government, according to a poll by TNS released by the Washington Post and ABC News. 54 per cent of respondents think wiretapping telephone calls and e-mails without court approval is an acceptable way to investigate terrorism.
On Dec. 19, U.S. president George W. Bush defended a secret domestic electronic surveillance program that includes the wiretapping of the telephone calls and e-mails of Americans suspected of having terrorist ties. The president's remarks came in response to media reports that, since 2002, Bush has authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to operate this program without any judicial oversight.
The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requires the federal government to obtain warrants from a secret federal court in order to conduct domestic surveillance operations. On Jan. 31 during his State of the Union address, Bush declared, "To prevent another attack—based on authority given to me by the Constitution and by statute—I have authorized a terrorist surveillance program to aggressively pursue the international communications of suspected al-Qaeda operatives and affiliates to and from America. Previous presidents have used the same constitutional authority I have, and federal courts have approved the use of that authority."
On Mar. 7, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence agreed to create a new seven-member subcommittee that would review the NSA program under a plan sanctioned by the White House. A call for a full investigation was voted down.
Republican Nebraska senator Chuck Hagel declared, "The scope of the subcommittee's purview will be broad, wide, deep." Democratic West Virginia senator John Rockefeller declared, "The committee, to put it bluntly, is basically under the control of the White House through its chairman."
Polling Data
On another subject: as you may know, the National Security Agency has been investigating people suspected of involvement with terrorism by secretly listening in on telephone calls and reading e-mails between some people in the United States and other countries, without first getting court approval to do so. Would you consider this wiretapping of telephone calls and e-mails without court approval as an acceptable or unacceptable way for the federal government to investigate terrorism?
Mar. 2006 | Jan. 2006 | |
Acceptable | 54% | 56% |
Unacceptable | 32% | 33% |
Source: TNS / Washington Post / ABC News
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,000 American adults, conducted from Mar. 2 to Mar. 5, 2006. Margin of error is 3 per cent.
