Dec 29

Spying in times of terror

A new poll out there shows that only 64% of Amer­i­cans believe that “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”:http://www.rasmussenreports.com/2005/NSA.htm. One won­ders what the num­bers would have been if “peo­ple liv­ing in the United States” were replaced by “Amer­i­cans.” Even so, 64% approval is pretty low in these fear of ter­ror­ism times.

Some ran­dom chat­ter on the blogs: Americablog’s “New domes­tic spy­ing poll num­bers are very bad for Bush”:http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/12/new-domestic-spying-poll-numbers-are.html, Ezra Klein’s “Trust, But Verify”:http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2005/12/trust_but_verif.html & Stephen Kaus at Huffington’s “Pop­ping the Wrong Question”:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-kaus/popping-the-wrong-questio_b_12982.html, Instapundit’s cryp­tic “I guess Kaus was right”:http://instapundit.com/archives/027738.php and Michelle Malkin’s “Sorry NYTimes: Amer­ica is OK with the NSA”:http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004176.htm.