The terrorists have won
UPDATE: Or maybe not. A Newsweek poll says differently.
UPDATE 2: The Mystery Pollster explains how that could happen.
They have frightened people enough for Americans to voluntarily give up their right to privacy, the Washington Post reports:
A majority of Americans initially support a controversial National Security Agency program to collect information on telephone calls made in the United States in an effort to identify and investigate potential terrorist threats, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.Bill Wineke says the NSA program is an insult to our troops.
The new survey found that 63 percent of Americans said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate terrorism, including 44 percent who strongly endorsed the effort. Another 35 percent said the program was unacceptable, which included 24 percent who strongly objected to it.
posted by xoff @ 1:23 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Does this mean we can bomb Tehran now?
I call bullshit. First, it's beyond idiotic to conduct a poll 24 hours after a story like this breaks. People would summarily reject this if the knew even the outlines of the issue. Things like:
∙ The program is blatantly illegal
∙ It doesn't even work
∙ The data being collected leaves people permanently vulnerable to abuse of their privacy, and not only in criminal matters
I'm a cynic and a misanthrope, but even I don't believe most people are as clinically retarded as this poll claims. If the press was worth a damn, it'd be conducting deliberative polling, not this kind of brain-dead, Sesame Street codswallop.
Oh it's hardly blatantly illegal as you can see here. Heck, even Professor Kerr, who Sven links to, doesn't say that. He says he doesn't know.
He says he doesn't know.
He caveats with a lot of "ifs" (naturally, given that the administration has studiously avoided any legal scrutiny of this program outside of its own cherry-picked syncophants in Justice), but he certainly doesn't say that.
(FYI, a syncophant is double-plus ungood form of a sycophant, and not the result of a stupid spelling error.)
Hey Sven -
If "ifs" and "buts" were candy and nuts, we'd all have a Merry Christmas.
MediaMatters debunked this poll. The assumption that the program is seperate from the NSA program is false. I am innocent so I have nothing to fear, but for the rest of you be worried.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200605120005
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