A Bit Encouraging, Albeit Surprising

A majority of U.S. registered voters consider Edward Snowden a whistle-blower, not a traitor, and a plurality says government anti-terrorism efforts have gone too far in restricting civil liberties, a poll released today shows.

Fifty-five percent said Snowden was a whistle-blower in leaking details about top-secret U.S. programs that collect telephone and Internet data, in the survey from Hamden, Connecticut-based Quinnipiac University. Thirty-four percent said he’s a traitor.

[...]

The poll also showed that by 45 percent to 40 percent, respondents said the government goes too far in restricting civil liberties as part of the war on terrorism. That was a reversal from January 2010, when in a similar survey 63 percent said anti-terrorism activities didn’t go far enough to protect the U.S. from attacks, compared with 25 percent who disagreed.

[...]

Male respondents, by 61 percent to 28 percent, said in the earlier survey that the government hadn’t gone far enough to protect the country.

Likewise, among Republicans the percentage who said government has gone overboard in restricting civil liberties in the fight against terrorism grew to 41 percent in the new poll, compared with 17 percent three years ago.

  Bloomberg

Thank you, Edward Snowden.

This is no surprise:

The poll showed both Democrats and Republicans about evenly divided on whether government counter-terrorism measures have become excessive. Independent voters view the methods as having gone too far by 49 percent to 36 percent.

And yet, I find this quite surprising:

The view of Snowden as a whistle-blower rather than traitor predominated among almost every group of respondents broken down by party, gender, income, education and age. Black voters were the lone exception, with 43 percent calling Snowden a traitor compared with 42 percent saying he was a whistle-blower.

What's that about?  But this...THIS is downright depressing.

The poll showed that men, by 54 percent to 34 percent, see the government as having gone too far in its efforts while women, by 47 percent to 36 percent, said the measures haven’t gone far enough.

WTF??  It's only palatable when you learn that in the earlier poll, 64% of women said the government hadn't gone far enough.  Still.  Ladies!  To quote a recently read comment:  "Dafuq is wrong with you?"