New polling
numbers suggest that United States citizens are on average more
afraid of their own government then the threat of another terrorist
attack.

Even after
a pair of bombings
in Boston two weeks ago injured hundreds, more Americans say they
are unwilling to sacrifice constitutional liberties for security
than those who are.

A handful of
polls conducted in the days after the Boston
Marathon bombings show that US citizens are responding much
differently than in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist
attacks that killed roughly 3,000 people. Not only are Americans
more opposed now to giving up personal freedoms for the sake of
security than they were after 9/11, but other statistics show that
distrust against the federal government continues to climb.

Just one day
after the April 15 Boston Marathon bombing, pollsters with Fox News
asked a sample of Americans, “Would you be willing to give
up some of your personal freedom in order to reduce the threat of
terrorism?” Forty-three percent of the respondents said they
would, while 45 percent said no. Comparatively, 71 percent of Americans
asked a similar question in October 2001 said theyÂ’d be willing
to give up personal freedoms, while only 20 percent opposed at the
time.

In the dozen
years since 9/11, frequent polling conducted by Fox has suggests
that the majority of Americans have all the while said theyÂ’d
give up their freedoms for the sake of security. Only with the latest
inquiry though are those answers reversed: the last time a majority
of Americans opposed giving up privacy for security was May 2001.

“Whether
or not the government overreacted in the immediate aftermath of
9/11 (and, given the information available at the time, reasonable
people can disagree), Americans then broadly supported a vigorous
domestic counterterrorism policy,” Alan Rozenshtein writes
for Lawfare Blog. “This time around, a rights-restrictive approach
might not garner the same public support – if indeed that’s
the road the government intends to go down.”

Indeed, a number
of cities across the country have already asked for more
surveillance cameras and other tactics that could be used to
allegedly prevent acts of terror in the wake of the Boston bombing,
but lawmakers in Washington have yet to impose the sort of restrictions
on constitutional liberties that came in the aftermath of 9/11 –
named the PATROIT Act and the establishment of the US Department
of Homeland Security and other agencies, including the Transportation
Security Administration.

A separate
poll conducted by the Washington Post just three days after
the Boston Marathon bombing reveals that nearly half of those surveyed
say that the government will go too far in trying to prevent future
acts of terrorism. The Post asked a random national sample of 588
adults, “Which worries you more: that the government (will
not go far enough to investigate terrorism because of concerns about
constitutional rights), or that it (will go too far in compromising
constitutional rights in order to investigate terrorism)?”
Days after the Boston bombing, 41 percent of respondents said the
government will not go far enough, compared to 48 percent saying
theyÂ’ll go too far. When similar questions were asked in 2006
and 2010, 44 percent and 27 percent said the government will go
too far, respectively, signaling that for the first time in years
Americans are overly concerned about a misuse of power on the part
of Washington.

That isnÂ’t
to say that the Boston attack is necessarily inspiring Americans
to question authority, though. Two months before Tsarnaev
brothers allegedly detonated a pair of explosives near the finish
line of the Boston Marathon, 53 percent of Americans polled by the
Pew Research Center said the federal government is threatening their
personal rights and freedoms. In November 2011, that statistic was
only 30 percent.

Reprinted
with permission from Russia
Today.

April
30, 2013

©
2013 Russia
Today