WASHINGTON, June 10 (UPI) -- A majority of Americans approve of the National Security Agency's phone-tracking program as a counter-terror tactic, a poll released Monday indicates.
Fifty-six percent of respondents to a Pew poll said it is acceptable for the NSA to get secret court orders to track calls of millions of Americans to investigate terrorism, while 41 percent said it was not acceptable, a Pew Research Center/Washington Post poll shows.
However, 45 percent said the government should be able to monitor everyone's email to prevent possible terrorism, while 52 percent said the government should not have that power.
The poll showed no indications last week's revelation of the government's farming of phone and Internet metadata has altered the public's views on the trade-offs between countering terror and protecting personal privacy.
Sixty-two percent of respondents said investigating terror threats is more important, while 34 percent said not intruding on privacy is more important.
Twenty-seven percent of respondents said they were following news about the data collection "very closely," while another 21 percent were following it "fairly closely."
The poll was conducted June 6-9 among 1,004 adults and had a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points.
