Most Americans Support Government Surveillance, Poll Says
By John Rossomando
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
December 13, 2001

(CNSNews.com) - Efforts by the ACLU and other civil liberties groups to turn public opinion against the president's anti-terrorism initiatives are falling on deaf ears, according to a poll conducted by Zogby International.

"Despite the best efforts by the ACLU and other rights groups... the various anti-terrorist efforts by the president and the attorney general have strong public support," said pollster John Zogby, president and CEO of Zogby International.

The Zogby poll indicates that 54 percent of Americans favor allowing telephone conversations to be monitored; 80 percent favor allowing video surveillance of public places such as street corners; 67 percent favor roadblock searches of vehicles, and 67 percent favor having their mail monitored.

John Zogby says he finds it "shocking" that Americans are willing to allow the government to have greater access to their personal lives in exchange for security.

"We are in a moment where fear trumps other considerations," Zogby said. "Frankly, I guess I never thought [that] I would live to see the day when Americans would want their cars stopped and checked, or their mail monitored, but we certainly had that day."

Zogby attributes this new attitude to the fear of further terrorist attacks and feels it is too soon to tell whether the attitudes reflected in the poll will be permanent.

The influence of the ACLU and other civil liberties groups may have waned recently, but Zogby says the organizations should not be counted out.

"I don't think you can conclude that this is the end of the ACLU, or other [civil liberties] groups," he said. "Basically this is the moment in which we live."

American Center for Law and Justice Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow believes the ACLU and other civil liberties groups have fallen out of touch with the necessities of the post 9-11 world.

"The ACLU has really missed it and have inflicted a self inflicted wound," Sekulow said. "Americans are smart people and we know that we are in a war [because] we have been attacked in a way in which we have never been attacked before."

An overwhelming number of Americans realize that the Bush anti-terrorism plan provided a balanced approach to a complex situation, according to Sekulow.

"There are not any violations of our civil liberties [in the anti-terrorism law], and it is preserving our very constitutional liberties, and it is preserving our very form of government, which is really what was attacked on September 11," Sekulow said. "If you study the history of civil liberties in times of war, we have more civil liberties today than any time in U.S. history, and that is with the Patriot Act.

"There are more freedoms today than there were at the time of the Vietnam War, during the time of World War II, certainly the Civil War, and I can go back in history to the Revolutionary War," Sekulow asserted. "The fact of the matter is that we are fighting a new kind of war, which requires new kinds of approaches, and part of that new approach of course is engaging in this battle with a degree of sophistication including intelligence gathering."

Sekulow shares Zogby's assessment of the current attitude that prevails among most Americans.

"Americans are afraid... this is a war where they turn airplanes into bombs and letters into bombs and use the postal service to deliver their weapons of mass destruction," Sekulow said. "I think Zogby's information is correct here, and I think that the ACLU really underestimated that."

The ACLU refused comment on the results of the Zogby poll.

But, a spokesman for the Libertarian Party rejected Sekulow's opinion, that Americans are freer today than during any previous war.

"This [anti-terrorism law] has a provision in it called a sneak and peak provision which allow police to search your home while you are not there and notify you that it has happened while you [were not] there," Libertarian Party Press Secretary George Getz said.

Getz said no similar law was enacted during previous wartime administrations.

"Right now the government has unprecedented power to read the e-mail of totally innocent people without a warrant," Getz said. "If you compare the e-mails to the snail mail that existed back during World War II, as far as I know, the government did not have the power to read the mail of totally innocent people.

"We dispute what [Sekulow] is saying," Getz said. "It seems to us that the Bush administration is caving into terrorism by making America less free."