Jan 31, 2006 3:35 PM

The Spying Question

Two polls. Same question. Opposite results:

NBC/Wall Street Journal:

Do you think that the Bush administration should conduct wiretaps of American citizens who are suspected of having ties to terrorists without a court order, or do you think that the Bush administration should be required to get a court order before conducting these wiretaps?

Should be able to wiretap without court order: 41%
Should be required to get a court order before wiretapping: 53%

Washington Post/ABC:

As you may know, the National Security Agency has been investigating people suspected of involvement with terrorism by secretly listening in on telephone calls and reading e-mails between some people in the United States and other countries, without first getting court approval to do so. Would you consider this wiretapping of telephone calls and e-mails without court approval as an acceptable or unacceptable way for the federal government to investigate terrorism?"

Acceptable: 56%
Unacceptable: 43%

The vital difference here seems to be that NBC/WSJ properly identifies the spied-upon as "American citizens" while the ABC/WaPo poll goes for the much more fuzzy "some people in the United States."

Perhaps equally important, the former places a heavy emphasis on the "required" thing to do; the latter asks whether a deviation from such standard protocol is "acceptable," while also hitting the terrorism angle twice. It's the difference between asking whether "people should be required to drive safely, even under trying conditions" or whether "it's acceptable to speed to get away from an axe murderer."

You can see why the administration is so eager to re-brand its domestic spying as a "terrorist surveillance" program: These aren't the 4th Amendment rights of American citizens at stake; this is about spying on evildoers in our midst.

Email Print