In reviewing public surveys on attitudes and actions towards terrorism I looked at the questions posed to participants by three newspapers, the Washington Post, the New York Times and the U.S.A. Today.  The surveys were conducted in the days immediately following the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks.  They examined issues concerning civil liberties and the prevention of future attacks. 

Completed by September 14th, three telephone surveys, one conducted by the New York Times and two by the Washington Post, asked whether or not participants would be willing to support giving up some of their personal liberties and privacy in order to prevent further terrorist attacks.  The three responses together yielded a median average of 725 participants with seventy percent willing to give up some of their civil liberties.  Twenty three percent said they were unwilling and seven percent responded with no opinion.  Given the severity of the attack that occurred just three days before, the large majority of citizens willing to forfeit their civil liberties was significant, but the response was understandable. 

However, attitudes of different participants, when posed questions regarding the forfeiture of specific civil liberties dramatically contrasted the responses of the earlier three surveys.  Three telephone surveys completed on September 15th by the U.S.A. Today and the New York Times posed three different questions regarding specific government measures.  The first asked if participants would be willing to allow government agencies to monitor the phone calls and e-mail of ordinary Americans on a regular basis.  Thirty-nine percent of 959 were willing, fifty-three percent were not willing and eight percent had no opinion.  The second survey asked 1,032 participants if they would favor or oppose making it easier for legal authorities to read mail, e-mail, or tap phones without the person’s knowledge.  Thirty-three were in favor, sixty-five opposed and two percent had no opinion.  “Would you favor or oppose allowing police to stop people on the street at random to search their possessions?” was the question posed to 1,032 participants by the third survey.  Twenty-nine percent were in favor, sixty-nine was opposed and two had no opinion.

The responses to the second set of three surveys were significant because neither or them indicated a majority willing to give up their civil liberties, at least not those particular liberties posed by the questions.  The percentage of participants willing to forfeit their civil liberties dropped significantly from a seventy-percent average to a thirty-four percent average.  This thirty-four percent average could have been higher if we a skewed the results of the first survey regarding specific government measures in favor of its willingness responses.  However, even with the readjustment of making the eight percent no opinion response in the first survey identical to the two percent no opinion responses of the other two surveys regarding specific government measures and averaging in the six percent in favor of the willingness responses, the disparity between the willingness averages is still strikingly great.  Given the similar results of the other two surveys regarding specific government measures, it would seem to have been more consistent with the responses to askew the eight percent no opinion percentage in favor of the unwillingness averages.  In either case, the results indicated a significant majority unwilling and opposed to giving up those civil liberties posed by the three surveys.  Extrapolating from these survey results, one could speculate that Americans would be opposed to giving up other civil liberties, if any at all. 
 

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USABCWP.091301, R12.  Washington Post Poll 13 Sept. 2001.  Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe: Statistics and Polling.  Online.  21 Jan. 2002. 

USCBSNYT.091501, R22.  New York Times Poll 15 Sept. 2001.  Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe: Statistics and Polling.  Online.  21 Jan. 2002. 

USCBSNYT.091501, R29.  New York Times Poll 15 Sept. 2001.  Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe: Statistics and Polling.   Online. 21 Jan. 2002.

USGALLUP.01SP14, R23H.  U.S.A. Today Poll 15 Sept. 2001.  Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe: Statistics and Polling.  Online. 21 Jan. 2002. 

USGALLUP.01SP14, R23G.  U.S.A. Today Poll 15 Sept. 2001.  Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe: Statistics and Polling.  Online. 21 Jan. 2002.