For all the media coverage telling the US public it should be up in arms about the NSA’s phone tracking, a new study from Pew suggests that the majority of the population couldn’t care less. In fact, many support the practice.
It seems that 56 per cent of Americans think that tracking phone call metadata is an acceptable practice when it comes to investigating terrorist threats. Weirdly, only 41 per cent of those asked thought it was unacceptable, and 62 per cent thought the pursuit of terrorists outweighs privacy concerns when it come to phone calls.
That figure drops substantially when it comes to monitoring email though: only 52 per cent of people thought government monitoring of email could help prevent future terrorist attacks. The difference probably owes a lot to the fact that people think of phone metadata as somehow less sensitive than email.
It seems strange that people just seem to care so little about intrusion into their personal lives. How would you feel about this happening in Australia? [Pew Research Center via Atlantic Wire via The Verge]
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