Do Americans care about privacy?
A new WaPo/Pew poll finds that 56 percent of Americans thing it’s acceptable for the National Security Agency to secretly access millions of Americans’ phone records. Sixty-two percent favor investigating terrorist threats “even if that intrudes on personal privacy.”
Do people just not give a damn about privacy anymore, what with their dreams of reality-TV celebrity and their willingness to function as a Facebook or Google product? Well, change the question from “MILLIONS of Americans” to “everyone” and only 45 percent think federal monitoring is okay.
In other words, public tolerance for this is partly due to the assumption that it will only happen to other people. I think Jamelle Bouie is right about this:
