Free Republic

Monday's Pew poll showing that a majority of Americans back the NSA’s phone-record harvesting drew 300+ comments so I figured you'd want to see this one too.CBS's numbers look … different: Seventy-five percent of Americans approve of federal agencies collecting the phone records of people the government suspects of terrorist activity, but a 58 percent majority disapproves of this type of data collection in the case of ordinary Americans.Majorities of Republicans and independents oppose the government collecting phone records of ordinary Americans; Democrats are divided. Democrats, who were heavily in favor of tracking domestic calls to fight terror in Pew’s...

Verizon is one of the phone companies currently being sued over its alleged disclosure of customer phone records to the NSA. In a response to the court last week, the company asked for the entire consolidated case against it to be thrown out—on free speech grounds. The response also alleges that the case should be thrown out because even looking into the issue could violate state secrets, of course, but a much longer section of the response tries to make the case that Verizon has a First Amendment right to "petition" the government. "Based on plaintiffs' own allegations, defendants' right...