63% of Americans believe NSA wiretapping to be ok

Can this actually be accurate? It kind of flies in the face of everything I have heard from every American I know.

Kinda makes me feel maybe that 63% of Americans actually either DESERVE to give up their Constitutional rights one at a time, or that they have no idea what kind of doors this opens.

www.abcnews.go.com...

Radio host Howie Carr echoed the sentiments of many Americans when he said, "This is a big story in the lame-stream media, but this is not a story that generates with the American public. … The average person looks at the headline and says, 'I'm glad they're doing this.'"

On Capitol Hill, though, news that the NSA has been gathering massive records on phone calls met criticism from shocked members of both political parties.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., says he'll call the heads of the major phone companies to testify before Congress.

Although the question is a bit slanted, I suppose.

Is it okay for the government to track phone calls made by you and millions of other Americans?
Yes, if the government says it is necessary to fight terrorism.
No, it is not acceptable no matter what the government says .

Disappointing to say the least.

yes, this just opens the door for the government to commit espionage on private citizens as they please.


and yes, the complacency of mna y americans is disturbing

It was a phone survey, I was afraid to say I did not agree.

This stuns me! Are people THAT damned asleep????? This is too similar to what happened in Germany under Hitler.

Next will be raod blocks with police asking "Papers please!".

Militia and protest groups will now be listened to and eventually gone all together.

The government was NEVER supposed to be more powerful than the people. Can we listen to our governments calls?

Same 63% will probably support implanting chips into their arms and into their children. Same 63% will probably support having a “black box” in every automobile.
Same 63% will probably support a One World Government.

Just some speculation .

63% of Americans believe NSA wiretapping to be ok

Obviously I have overestimated the intelligence of some of my fellow citizens. I find 63% to be an appalling figure in view of wiretapping in the larger context.

A lot of very strange things are going on in the US and the federal government is responsible for most of them. I cannot believe people would agree that this violation of privacy is acceptable in what is supposed to be a democracy.

All this does is cement my opinion that the Soviet Union is alive and well and operating under the title of United States, and that apathy in the US is more widespread than I ever imagined it to be.

We simply have it too good here.

[edit on 5/12/2006 by Bibliophile]

Seems like all the propaganda that is being pumped out by the Bush assministration is working.

Heh, go figure that folks still fall for that crud! (from them)

Saw Bush on TV, he is still using fear of terrorism to legitimise invading privacy, where are all the other voices on the news? All the old ladies are feeling better now that GWB is on the case, wadda they care if the gubberment hears about the new red hat that matches her giant wrap around terminator sunglasses?

Scare the old ladies and the ignoramuses, and it's sold. Meanwhile the more informed have to bite the bullit.

One step closer to complete control, your telephone, then the micro-chip implants.
If god is real, we could use a god or Jesus right now.

63%? Well hell,nobody asked me.
In that case allow me to inject my opinion.
I think its a damn shame what has become of this country,and I for one,thinks its not ok. And if this much info is being revealed,i can imagine the amounts that are still being kept secret.

:shk: Im not really sure how to respond to this except that I am appalled. Really appaled that people would think this is okay. Perhaps the question was slanted but the fundemental think is that 2/3'rds agreed with this fundemental erosion of our rights.

63% of Americans my butt, they probably selected who to call. That stuff is uaully fixed in some way. The gov't does need the ability to tap phone calls to fight terrorism, the problem with the gov't is you cannot trust them. You ask them to take an inch of your freedom and they take a mile.

Originally posted by godservant
This stuns me! Are people THAT damned asleep????? This is too similar to what happened in Germany under Hitler.

Next will be raod blocks with police asking "Papers please!".

Militia and protest groups will now be listened to and eventually gone all together.

The government was NEVER supposed to be more powerful than the people. Can we listen to our governments calls?

ASLEEP is right - I agree 100%
Did you EVER think that the American people would allow this? (or rather fall for this), and I believe there's much, much more to come in the name of 'protecting the people'.
It's a GREAT cover story/excuse to secretly monitor growing public dissent of government and all other institutional policies - all while the back door to the country is practically wide open - and will stay that way despite a few thousand national guard troops to temporarily assist in 'guard duty'.

All polls are targeted to get the response the pollster desires. Let me explain:

If they polled the people in the Washington DC area, 63% would probably be about right. Everybody works for the government there.

If they polled the people in Montana I doubt they would have gotten 5%.

Polls are designed to back up the opinions of the people that commission the polls in the first place. If they want a liberal opinion they make the calls to the North eastern part of the country.

If they want a conservative opinion they call just about anywhere else in the country.

This poll was probably paid for by those people trying to cover their butts once this hit the news. They payed the pollsters who guarenteed them positive results. Then the pollsters called the most liberal or conservative areas they have listed and provided the results to the media to exploit.

The results will always depend on who payed for the poll in the first place.

Just my opinion,

wupy

[edit on 12-5-2006 by mrwupy]

The Pink Floyd reference applies 100% to this thread. What stuns me is how incredibly paranoid people have become, and how the media controls people so easily. The details of this program are in the open source, so I'm not sharing secrets here. I will break down the program reported in the USA Today for ya, since I was briefed on the details today.

In just about every fortune 500 company, sniffers are used to monitor networks, these sniffers are designed to provide audit logs and other information on IP networks, particularly large 1,000,000 node or more networks, like a large state government agency or large corporation.

The sniffers are filtering on 3 key details.

IP source
IP destination
data size

This type of software is in every major organization with 10,000 nodes or more, corporate or government. Why? For even the most mundane reasons, example.

Say a downlevel systems administrator discovers malware on a PC in a remote facility. He must now determine how widespread the infection is, not only within the original facility, but other facilities. Using a simple query, the admin can pull up the data on the source machine IP address, and use the data to investigate whether other machines were infected, primarily because now that admin knows which machines to check.

This NSA program does exactly the same thing for phone numbers. It records certain data based on filters, specifically:

source phone number
destination phone number
length of call

Now when a field agent gathers a phone number from a suspected terrorist, analyst can pull up the phone number of the suspect, and build a grid based on who that number has called, who has called that number, and the length of the calls. Obviously phone numbers with lots of calls with long call lengths would be important. This information can be turned back over to the agent, and the agent can seek a warrent for the information of the associated phone numbers using the data as evidence to convince the judge to deliver a warrent.

This program is actually the good program, at least the smart one, because it does not violate any laws at all, and it fits into the legal justification system established for FISA. It is why both political parties have known about this program, but haven't considered it a big deal, and can only capitalize on it while the media misinforms people regarding the details.

This whole episode isn't a freedom of privacy issue, it is a massive media manipulation issue, and this thread shows just how easily the American people can be duped.

Do people who are freaking out realize just how easily you are being manipulated based on ZERO facts and evaluation? How many IT perspectives have you actualy read before this one? Even DefenseTech, who tried to cover it from a network perspective, used an 'expert' with a masters in social networking, not IT Security.

It is truly sad how many Americans have become a population of drones, like the dkos crowd for example. It is equally sad that examples of drones can be found even on a website based on a healthy dose of skeptism in propaganda like this one.

YO!

I could not find ANYTHING in the article that said 63 percent of ANYONE is
ok with Wiretapping..
If you can find it in the article, please reference it for me..I didn't see it anywhere.

I'll go back and re-read once more, to make sure I didn't miss anything..
and will return to eat my words if I find it..

An ABC News/Washington Post poll says that 63 percent think the secret program is justified, while 35 percent call it unjustified.

I was reading this article this morning at Crooks and Liars, it explains how this poll was done. It's all Bushganda, IMHO

www.crooksandliars.com...

"Somehow, The Washington Post -- on the very same day most people learned about the new NSA data-collection program -- managed to conduct a poll which purports to show that "63 percent of Americans said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate terrorism." The reaction is painfully predictable. Bush followers are celebrating with glee, as though the issue is resolved in their favor and they won, while some Democrats are quivering with caution, urging that this issue be kept at arm's length lest they take a position that isn't instantaneously and overwhelmingly popular...read on

www.firedoglake.com...

The headline blazing across the Washington Post this morning reads: "Poll: Most Americans Support NSA’s Efforts."It was written by Richard Morin.

(Snip)

So before the phone records story even breaks, Morin — who knows absolutely what he is doing — starts polling people who have no idea what he’s talking about and giving it his best shot, tying it to the War on Terra. It works. Today it’s plastered across the front page of the washingtonpost.com

(Snip)

As eRiposte has noted, in a CBS/NYT poll earlier this year this was one of the questions posed.

In order to reduce the threat of terrorism, would you be willing or not willing to allow government agencies to monitor the telephone calls and e-mails of ordinary Americans on a regular basis?

At that time 70% responded "no." A rather strong indication that a lot has to do with how these particular questions are worded.

[edit on 12/5/2006 by Sauron]

Sauron,

Tell me there isn't 100% media manipulation taking place here. Those links make it pretty clear the media is manipulating BOTH SIDES of the issue.

Yet people are lining up, for or against, and the details of the program weren't even released until TODAY when IT security directors of major corporations and within state governments were briefed.

Next thing you know, the media is going to convince people the NSA is tracking them on the internet, and they will print 10,000 words in the NYTs about it but forget to mention Clarion Corporation, formally known as Gator Software, and how that company tracked you for the NYTs website advertising division for years.

Another Brick in the Wall.

Originally posted by darksided
Sauron,
Tell me there isn't 100% media manipulation taking place here. Those links make it pretty clear the media is manipulating BOTH SIDES of the issue.
Another Brick in the Wall.

Oh I agree with you, one side is as bad as the other.

63%??? Bullocks. They lie. CNN had a similar poll up a couple days ago and it was something like 70% AGAINST wiretapping (at least when I looked at it - and I don't trust CNN either).

The propaganda is getting more and more noticeable. A big for the Bush administration. What a load of crock.

Originally posted by Umbrax

An ABC News/Washington Post poll says that 63 percent think the secret program is justified, while 35 percent call it unjustified.

Hi Umbrax,

Was that for me? If so, I still don't see anything about wiretapping.
Which was my point, the thread title is misleading..This is about call logging.