{"id":7404,"date":"2006-05-13T14:58:50","date_gmt":"2006-05-13T18:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7404"},"modified":"2006-05-13T14:58:50","modified_gmt":"2006-05-13T18:58:50","slug":"about-those-poll-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/about-those-poll-results\/","title":{"rendered":"About those poll results…"},"content":{"rendered":"

The political world was taken a back a bit yesterday when a Washington Post\/ABC News poll<\/a> showed that Americans didn’t much mind that the government has kept a [tag]secret[\/tag] [tag]database[\/tag] that logs almost every [tag]phone call[\/tag] made by every American. What’s worse, respondents were asked specifically if it would bother them if there was a record of their phone calls, 66% said it would not.<\/p>\n

Did the poll’s wording influence the results? Was the poll asked too soon (about 12 hours after most Americans learned about the secret [tag]NSA[\/tag] program)? Newsweek has done a poll of its own<\/a> which offers a more complete look at the public’s reaction to the controversy.<\/p>\n

Has the [tag]Bush[\/tag] administration gone too far in expanding the powers of the President to fight terrorism? Yes, say a majority of Americans, following this week’s revelation that the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone records of U.S. citizens since the September 11 terrorist attacks. According to the latest [tag]NEWSWEEK[\/tag] [tag]poll[\/tag], 53 percent of [tag]Americans[\/tag] think the NSA’s surveillance program “goes too far in invading people’s privacy,” while 41 percent see it as a necessary tool to combat terrorism.<\/p>\n

President [tag]Bush[\/tag] tried to reassure the public this week that its privacy is “fiercely protected,” and that “we’re not mining or trolling through the personal lives of innocent Americans.” Nonetheless, Americans think the White House has overstepped its bounds: 57 percent said that in light of the NSA data-mining news and other executive actions, the Bush-Cheney Administration has “gone too far in expanding presidential power.” That compares to 38 percent who think the Administration’s actions are appropriate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The wording of the question matters: “As you may know, there are reports that the NSA, a government intelligence agency, has been collecting the phone call records of Americans. The agency doesn’t actually listen to the calls but logs in nearly every phone number to create a database of calls made within the United States. Which of the following comes CLOSER to your own view of this domestic surveillance program?”<\/p>\n

Given this, 53% of Americans believe the program goes too far (partisan breakdown: 73-21 Dems, 56-41 independents, and 26-69 GOP)<\/p>\n

As Kevin put it<\/a>, “My faith in the American public is slightly restored.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The political world was taken a back a bit yesterday when a Washington Post\/ABC News poll showed that Americans didn’t much mind that the government has kept a [tag]secret[\/tag] [tag]database[\/tag] that logs almost every [tag]phone call[\/tag] made by every American. What’s worse, respondents were asked specifically if it would bother them if there was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7404\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}