And yet, this Pew Research poll from two days ago:

> "Overall, 56 percent of Americans consider the NSA’s accessing of telephone call records of millions of Americans through secret court orders “acceptable,” while 41 percent call the practice “unacceptable.”" [1]

The Pew question only specifies phone data monitoring, while the Gallup question mentions both phone and internet data. I'm sure the poll-question-phrasing-savvy can provide some more insight on the differences.

How much of the difference can be attributed to people's minds changing in response to further revelations, the quality of the government's response, the opinions of their peers, etc?

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/most-americans-suppor...