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Surveys contradict previous Pew poll<\/p>\n
Paul Joseph Watson<\/strong> Contradicting a previous Pew poll which found that a majority of Americans support the NSA spying on telephone records, new surveys find that most Americans decry NSA snooping and view whistleblower Edward Snowden as a patriot for exposing the existence of PRISM.<\/p>\n As we reported on Tuesday<\/a>, many reacted with shock to a Pew Research Center poll which found that 56% of Americans supported the NSA \u201ctracking the telephone records of millions of Americans,\u201d suggesting that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden \u2014 who sacrificed his freedom to expose the existence of PRISM, a program under which the NSA is pulling private data \u201cdirectly from the servers\u201d of major US service providers such as Google and Facebook \u2014 had acted in vain.<\/p>\n However,\u00a0a new Gallup poll<\/a>\u00a0conducted this week finds that \u201cMore Americans disapprove (53%) than approve (37%) of the federal government agency program that as part of its efforts to investigate terrorism obtained records from U.S. telephone and Internet companies to \u201ccompile telephone call logs and Internet communications.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat can one deduce from this discrepancy? Perhaps it is nothing more complex than polling bias, most recently observed during the 2012 presidential campaign, and which shows that sometimes it is more important who is doing the polling than who is being polled and what questions are being asked,\u201d\u00a0writes Zero Hedge<\/a>.<\/p>\n Just as in the Pew poll, more Democrats than Republicans (49% to 32%) are likely to approve NSA snooping, underscoring once again how leftists abandon their concern for privacy and civil liberties when a Democrat is in the White House.<\/p>\n The Gallup poll correlates with a separate\u00a0CBS News poll<\/a>\u00a0which found that 58% of Americans disapprove of the government \u201ccollecting phone records of ordinary Americans.\u201d The Gallup poll also shows that 35% of Americans would be \u201cvery concerned\u201d about violation of their own privacy rights if the government had computerized logs of their telephone calls or Internet communications, while 22% said they would be \u201csomewhat concerned.\u201d<\/p>\n A slight majority (44% to 42%) believe Edward Snowden was right to leak the information to the press.<\/p>\n In addition, following Snowden\u2019s quote to the South China Morning Post, when he remarked, \u201cI\u2019m neither traitor nor hero. I\u2019m an American,\u201d\u00a0a Reuters\/Ipsos poll<\/a>\u00a0confirms that most Americans look favorably on the whistleblower\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n 23% of those surveyed viewed Snowden as a traitor, while 31% said he was a patriot. 46% said they don\u2019t know, suggesting that the narrative behind the story has a way to go before it fully unfurls. In addition, 35% said Snowden should face no charges while 25% think he should be charged to the full extent of the law.<\/p>\n Only 6% of those surveyed had no objections to the PRISM surveillance program, while 37% said it is completely unacceptable. A majority of 45% said PRISM was acceptable under some circumstances.<\/p>\n *********************<\/p>\n Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for\u00a0Infowars.com<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Prison Planet.com<\/a>. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nInfowars.com
\nJune 13, 2013<\/p>\n