Poll Finds Americans Don't Trust the Government to Abide by Constitution

A new Rasmussen Reports poll released Monday shows over half of Americans distrust the president, executive branch, Congress and federal judges to make sure national surveillance programs are abiding by the Constitution.

Last week, reports surfaced detailing a program by the National Security Agency to collect millions of Americans phone records. President Obama attempted to assure Americans that nobody is listening to your telephone calls. He went on to defend the surveillance programs, saying some encroachments of privacy were a necessary trade-off for security. Obama claimed the surveillance efforts were enacted to protect against terrorism.

But the new poll suggests more than half (52 percent) of Americans distrust the president and other branches of the government to make sure the program abides by the Constitution. Only 30 percent said they trust the government to do so.

On top of that, 68 percent believe the government is listening in on their phone conversations, despite the president saying otherwise.

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on June 8-9. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence.