63% in poll support phone data mining

WASHINGTON — A majority of Americans support a controversial National Security Agency program to collect information on telephone calls made in the United States in an effort to identify and investigate potential terrorist threats, according to the first poll on the issue.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 63 percent of Americans said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate terrorism, including 44 percent who strongly endorsed the effort. An additional 35 percent said the program was unacceptable, which included 24 percent who strongly objected to it.

A slightly larger majority — 66 percent — said they would not be bothered if NSA collected records of personal calls they had made, the poll found.

Underlying those views is the belief that the need to investigate terrorism outweighs privacy concerns. According to the poll, 65 percent of those interviewed said it was more important to investigate potential terrorist threats "even if it intrudes on privacy." Three in every 10 — 31 percent — said it was more important for the federal government not to intrude on personal privacy, even if that limits its ability to investigate possible terrorist threats.

Half — 51 percent — approved of the way President Bush was handling privacy matters.

At the same time, Americans said by a 56 percent to 42 percent margin that it was appropriate for the news media to have disclosed the existence of this secret government program.

The survey results reflect initial public reaction to the NSA program.

Those views could change or deepen as more details about the effort become known over the next few days.

A total of 502 randomly selected adults were interviewed Thursday night for this survey. Margin of sampling error is five percentage points for the overall results. The practical difficulties of doing a survey in a single night represents another potential source of error.