On December 28, the Rasmussen Poll announced that it had recently surveyed Americans and determined that…
Sixty-four percent (64%) of Americans believe the National Security Agency (NSA) should be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States. A Rasmussen Reports survey found that just 23% disagree.
Today, results were released of an AP-Ipsos poll that said…
A majority of Americans want the Bush administration to get court approval before eavesdropping on people inside the United States, even if those calls might involve suspected terrorists, an AP-Ipsos poll shows. 56 percent of respondents…said the government should be required to first get a court warrant to eavesdrop on the overseas calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens when those communications are believed to be tied to terrorism.
Now, let's assume for the moment that both these polls are correct — a small assumption with the AP one, a larger one with Rasmussen but still, in both cases, an assumption. These two polls are not mutually exclusive. If I believe the Bush administration should be allowed to snoop on the phone calls of terrorist suspects but should do so only with warrants and judicial oversight, I'd be with the majority in both polls. The thing is: Neither poll reflects the actual situation. Neither is really asking about the law as it currently stands.
The NSA law allows the administration to eavesdrop on just about anybody it wants. They're supposed to get a warrant before they do it but if they feel time is of the essence, they can do it immediately and then they have 72 hours to secure the warrant afterwards. Some people don't seem to know about this last part. A lot of Bush defenders are arguing for his position as if complying with the law as written means that they have to go to a judge beforehand and therefore can't act swiftly. Not so. They just have to let this secret court that was set up to keep an eye on wiretaps know what they're doing.
The controversy is not about whether if Osama bin Laden phones you, the government should be listening in. It's about whether the Bush administration can overlook a law that was set up to govern how wiretaps would be done, and can conduct them without any oversight, either before or after the fact. How come nobody's polling on how we feel about that?