Disgusting? Yes. Surprising? No.

A new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll of 1,003 adults found that 50 percent of those polled believe it’s OK to forgo warrants when ordering electronic surveillance.

50 percent.

I guaran-fucking-tee you that it “just happens” to work out regionally, with those 50 percent largely coming from Red states.

EDITED TO ADD: AP has a poll that skews the other way, with 56% saying that a warrant is required, but still—I can’t believe a clear issue of criminality like this is polling anywhere NEAR 50/50, no matter how it swings.

16 Replies to “Disgusting? Yes. Surprising? No.”

  1. I felt sick when I read that. I nearly fainted in the elevator. (Which is where I read it, on these little tv screens-news feeds we have here in our work elevators.)

  2. It takes quite a lot to change the opinion of people who are of the comfortable mindset: “Since I’m not doing anything wrong, I don’t mind them watching me.”

    Sounds nice and in a nice world, that wouldn’t be an issue. However, absolute power corrupts absolutely and unmonitored wiretaps are absolute power. While it is illegal and immoral, nobody’s going to change their mind unless someone “not doing anything wrong” gets in hot water for something they thought was innocent. Sad fact, actually.

    It comes from people who haven’t learned (or blissfully ignored) the horrors of McCarthyism or Japanese internment camps or Nixon-era enemy lists.

  3. Yeah, gotta love the quote from the AP poll article:

    Cynthia Ice-Bones, 32, a Republican from Sacramento, Calif., said knowing about the program made her feel a bit safer. “I think our security is so important that we don’t need warrants. If you’re doing something we shouldn’t be doing, then you ought to be caught,” she said.

    Dumb twat.

  4. Ice-Bones?

    ICE-BONES?!?

    [shakes head]

    Anyhow, time to roll out that chestnut of a Franklin quote to her: “Those who would choose security over liberty deserve neither.”

  5. Bet you they’re not opining on the actual issue, which is why the divide looks similar to the election. They’re just looking at it as a Bush issue.

  6. DailyKos was all over the CNN/Gallup polls during the 2004 election. Gallup executives are major donors to the GOP and their polls are notorious for oversampling Republicans which results in a more “friendly” result. Gallup may have been a respectable organization at one point, but now, to me at least, their name is synonymous with Diebold.

  7. Actually, the pollsters (along with asking a completely stupid question) have spun this all backward. Wonder if they are funded by the RNC or something?

    Anyway, when you disregard the spin & look at the question they actually asked, you see that under 50% of Americans support spying on terrorists without warrants. That’s right, a majority of Americans say the government should have a warrant even to spy on terrorists. You know, the people who want to kill us.

    When you ask the correct question – do you suppport the Bush White House’s warrantless wiretapping of ordinary Americans – what is actually going on here – opposition rises to 75%. But that result is buried deep in the polling data.

    AmericaBlog breaks it down.

  8. Apparently she doesn’t know how flexible the definition of "things you shouldn’t be doing" usually becomes when people in power have carte blanche to decide such things.

  9. Yep, because if the media reports anything negative about the preznit, it gets no turkee.

    I was scrolling through the comments to see if anyone had brought up John Aravosis’ take on the poll reporting; nice to see I’m not the only one.

  10. Because it’s all “other people,” not ordinary citizens. It’s bad guys. It’s not blatently illegal activity that could have been accomplished within the law. No, ordinary citizens wouldn’t have the CIA knock on their door for saying something would they?

    Scuse me, someone’s at my door….

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