Polling Data Suggests 56 Percent Of Americans Support Warrantless Surveillance
The results show that 56% of Americans support warrantless wiretapping, while 28% oppose it. From a political angle, 67% of Republicans favor it, while 55% of Democrats do. Meanwhile, Independents are far more divided, with 40% in favor, and 35% opposed.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the under-30 crowd sways more towards opposition. While only one-third of under-30s favored, two-thirds of the above-30s crowd did.
Ultimately, those who favor warrantless wiretapping believe that sometimes, it's necessary, for the sake of our safety. The poll goes on to report that 6 out of every 10 people are somewhat concerned by terrorist attacks, which is a major change from a 2013 poll, where 3 out of every 10 were.
On a different note, 7 out of 10 people say that the government does a somewhat good job protecting their right to vote, and 6 out of 10 think that it's doing a good job of protecting freedom of speech. Meanwhile, only 4 out of 10 think that the government is successful in protecting persons from unreasonable search and seizure, as well as the right to bear arms.
Regardless of these results, the US is at least scaling-back its spying efforts. Whether it's going far enough with that, however, is hard to say.