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January 27, 2006
It depends what you mean by “surveillance”
A new New York Times/CBS Poll released today once again showed that the way a question is phrased matters. When respondents were asked whether they support the Bush administration’s surveillance program:
Fifty-three percent of the respondents said they supported eavesdropping without warrants "in order to reduce the threat of terrorism."
It may seem like Americans are willing to throw civil liberties out the window for the sake of safety, but the poll drew out more nuance than that. Most respondents said they would only support the monitoring of emails and phone calls if the government was “suspicious” of the person. They did not support infringing on “ordinary” citizens.
It will be interesting to see how the President and the media will label the surveillance program over the coming weeks, and particularly tonight at the State of the Union Address. It sounds like a terrorist monitoring program will fly much better with the American people than a national eavesdropping expedition.
Posted by Laura McGann at January 27, 2006 08:34 AM
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