The American public is divided over whether the NSA PRISM leak helped or harmed public interest, according to a poll conducted by the Pew Center for the People and the Press, but a majority said that Edward Snowden should be criminally prosecuted.

As classified information leak scandals go, the survey showed that this one has relatively more support than the most recent similar scandal: Many more people thought the NSA PRISM leak was in the best interests of the public than those who thought the Wikileaks disclosure in 2010 was in the public's best interest, the Pew report said.

While the public is divided over the NSA PRISM program itself, a majority of those surveyed said that the program probably helped prevent terrorism.

Even though a lot of people didn’t think that the government was collecting data from their phone calls and emails, a significant majority said that they would feel violated if they knew that that had happened.

Here are the survey results, in a series of charts:

Public Opinion: Edward Snowden and NSA's PRISM
Yes, the NSA PRISM leak was in the interests of the public, and yes, Snowden should be prosecuted. Lisa Mahapatra
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