Americans Willing to Give Up Some Freedoms for Security

Americans are willing to give up some privacy and freedoms for security—but not others. A new AP poll has charted just which freedoms Americans are partial to. For example:

• 71% are OK with surveillance cameras in public places
• 58% are fine with full-body scans and pat-downs at the airport
• 47% favor a national ID card
• 35% approve of ethnic or racial profiling at the airport
• 30% support monitoring emails without a warrant
• 25% back eavesdropping on domestic phone calls without a warrant

Americans are, however, a lot more forgiving when it comes to spying on foreigners—47% are OK with snooping on emails between people outside the US, for example. It should be noted, however, that 46% of the AP’s respondents said that, if forced to choose, they’d pick security from terrorists over their rights—a far cry from the 25% willing to do so in last week’s Gallup poll. (More civil liberties stories.)