Seventy three percent Americans believe that the new surveillance reforms will not make much difference to personal privacy, a joint poll by USA Today and Pews Research shows.
Last week, President Barack Obama suggested a series of reforms that included the government needing judicial approval before searching the 'metadata' (broad information about phone and email communication), reported First Read.
However, not many think that the reforms will actually protect the privacy of people. For the survey, Pew Research Center polled 1,504 adults. They found that just 21 percent approved the proposed National Security Agency reforms.
A total of 79 percent who did not hear the proposals said it will hardly make any difference to the government to counteract the terrorism.
Around 53 percent of Americans disapproved of the surveillance strategy compared to 40 percent who approved of it.
However, the opinions are divided on Edward Snowden's NSA leaks. Forty-five percent Americans said they approved of the disclosure he made and 43 percent said the leaks harmed public interest. Fifty six percent against 32 percent think that the government should pursue a criminal case against Snowden, stated the survey.
Experts think that the poll results showed that most of the Americans favor national security over civil security. "In trading off between civil liberty and national security, the American public decisively favors national security when it feels the threat acutely and imminently but tilts in the other direction when the threats seem more remote," Peter Feaver, a National Security Council aide for Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton told USA Today.
The survey had sampling error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.
