Americans put safety ahead of intrusion Rally cry: Supporters of NSA leaker Edward Snowden at a rally in Manhattan's Union Square on Monday. A large majority of Americans say the federal government should focus on investigating possible terrorist threats even if personal privacy is compromised, according to a new Washington Post-Pew Research Centre poll. A total of 45 per cent of all Americans say the government should be able to go further than it is, saying it should be able to monitor everyone's online activity if doing so would prevent terrorist attacks. A slender majority, 52 per cent, say no such broad-based monitoring should occur. Overall, 56 per cent of Americans polled said the National Security Administration's use of the telephone records of millions of Americans through secret court orders was "acceptable," while 41 per cent called it "unacceptable." In 2006, when news broke of the NSA's monitoring of telephone and email communications without court approval, there was a closer divide - 51 per cent to 47 per cent. General priorities are similar to what they were in 2006: 62 per cent of Americans now say it is more important for the government to investigate terrorist threats, even if those investigations intrude on personal privacy, while 34 per cent say privacy should be the focus, regardless of the effect on investigations. But with a Democratic president at the helm instead of a Republican, partisan views have turned around significantly. Sixty-nine per cent of Democrats say terrorism investigations, not privacy, should be the government's main concern, an 18-percentage-point jump from early January 2006, when the NSA activity under the George W. Bush administration was first reported. Compared with that time, Republicans' focus on privacy has increased 22 points. The reversal on the NSA's practices is even more dramatic. In early 2006, 37 per cent of Democrats found the agency's activities acceptable; now nearly twice that number - 64 per cent - say the use of telephone records is OK. In contrast, Republicans slumped from 75 per cent acceptable to 52 per cent today. The poll was conducted from Thursday to Sunday among a random national sample of 1004 adults. Results from the full poll have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. The question on monitoring everyone's online activity was asked from Friday; results from that question have a 4.5-point error margin.