An (Attempted) Response to CitizenFour
Prior to viewing CitizenFour, I had little to no knowledge on privacy and data surveillance. Similar to anyone else who was on the same page as me, I was completely unaware that the government has (illegal) massive covert-surveillance programs run by the National Surveillance Agency (NSA) in collaboration with other intelligence agencies worldwide. After hearing this I immediately ask myself, “Wait, what about my freedom of speech? What about my privacy? Why is the government invading my privacy?”
Laura Poitras created this news worthy documentary with reporter Glenn Greenwald from The Guardian and Edward Snowden, a NSA contractor. Together, the trio works together to expose the truth about Americans’ privacy and how it is being invaded. Through interviews with Snowden, information published to the public through Greenwald, and from court footage they reveal the government’s systematic disregard for Americans’ privacy. They view this as the biggest single infringement on American’s rights and want the public to know what is going on. A main point of this documentary is that Poitras (along with Snowden) wants Americans’ to hear this information and as a result ask themselves what type of government they want to have.
One of Poitras’ main points is that Americans should be aware of what their government is doing. Since 9/11 the government began actively spying on everyone in the country. A court case reveals that NSA taped into telecommunication companies’ networks and intercepted customers’ email and telephone communications even though it had nothing — I repeat, nothing — to do with security. Why does Poitras think this is important? First off, this means that the largest telecommunication companies are betraying their customers trust. Not okay. Trust is thrown out the window a second time when NSA director, Keith Anderson, denies in court that NSA goes through Americans’ information. Poitras uses this contradicting footage — Snowden exposing programs that they do go through our information and footage of Anderson lying in court — to make ourselves ask “how can we trust government officials if they lie to us?”
Poitras makes it clear that the government betrayal doesn’t stop with NSA building worldwide infrastructure that intercepts every digital communication. They also tap into nine leading Internet companies including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, AOL, and YouTube and have access to emails, photos, etc. NSA knows passwords that are unique to you that aren’t known to anyone else, they can hot mic hotel phones when they’re plugged in, and to top it off they can even watch live drone videos from multiple countries from their desktop. Creepy. In addition to a few of these privacy-invading practices, Jacob Appaulsbaum speaks about link ability at an Occupy Wall Street security training. When you link one data with another data such as your Metra card with your credit card, the government knows what you’re doing, where you go, who you talk to, what you buy, etc. By exposing this information, Poitras reveals one of her main points — the government has systematic disregard for Americans’ privacy.
Poitras was aware that many Americans believe this invasion of privacy is necessary to help protect Americans’ security after the catastrophic 9/11. Poitras disputes this belief when Greenwald publishes his first story to the public about the government collecting information from Verizon customers. During the interview on the news Greenwald explains that after 9/11 the government created The Patriot Act, which gave them very broad powers to get records about people with a lower level of suspicion than probable cause. However, they are collecting information about every single Verizon customer, not just ones they have suspicion about.
Poitras disputes the common belief that invasion is entirely to protect American’s security a second time through footage of Greenwald during a court hearing. At the court hearing, Greenwald states, “Since 9/11 everything is in the name to protect American’s security. In reality it’s the opposite, a lot of the documents have nothing to do with terrorism or national security but with competition between countries and with companies’ industrial, financial, or economic issues.” Where are the government’s limits?
Prior to watching the documentary, my thoughts on privacy and data surveillance were simple minded and backed up with no concrete knowledge. I, like many Americans’, was okay with the government having access to my communication in order to protect my country from harm. I knew any information they collected from me would not get me in trouble with the law, so I could care less. But then in the beginning of the documentary an anonymous encrypted source (soon to be revealed as Snowden) tells Poitras, “you can immediately nail me to the cross”, instead of choosing to protect his identity. If he wanted the American people to know this information that badly then I should give deeper thought to my stance on this critical topic.
Throughout the documentary, Poitras, Snowden and Greenwald made many thought provoking points and statements regarding government trust, freedom of speech, privacy, and liberty. The first statement that stuck out to me was when Snowden said, “People are careful with what they type into search engines because they know they’re being watched and this limits boundaries of their intellectual exploration.” This caught my attention because I never associated invasion of privacy with limiting the boundaries of someone’s intellectual exploration. America was not built to be a country where people have to limit their existence and worry about being watched; America was built to be the land of the free. A second statement that made me question my trust in the government was when a former NSA employee said he wasn’t shocked the companies are denying it (referring to interfering peoples’ communication). I wasn’t shocked to hear that people in the government lie — politics are politics — but I questioned my trust when Snowden said there are no checks over the NSA’s shoulder which allows them to take whatever information they want. Is this the governments’ way of turning a blind eye on NSA so that the government can’t be responsible for blame?
It was clear that freedom, privacy, and liberty were important values for Poitras to include in the documentary. After all, this is America, land of the free. Greenwald says, “What good is the right to free speech if it’s not protected-in the sense that you can’t have a private discussion with somebody else that you disagree with? Think about the chilling effect that has on countries without the right to privacy.” Then there was another statement asking “How can you believe in freedom when you have secret codes, secret investigations, without any member of the American knowing about it. That’s not freedom.” Preach. Then there was another thought-provoking statement, “What people used to call liberty and freedom, we now call privacy and we say that privacy is dead. When we lose privacy, we lose liberty because we no longer feel free to speak.” After reflecting on these statements I realized how important my privacy and sense of freedom and liberty is to me. It’s a big reason why I take pride in my country. The government is responsible for providing security; however security does not require a complete invasion of privacy and communication. The government does need to find a balance, but it is up to us citizens to begin this debate and make our voices heard.
Poitras created this documentary because she believes that this is a critical topic that needs to be communicated. Point, blank, period. Snowden himself mentions that by revealing this information it gives people the chance to decide what type of government they want. I agree that this topic needs to be brought to peoples’ attention and it requires a critical conversation to be started. However, the one weakness (or “struggle” so to say) with the documentary is that if you have little background knowledge (like myself) about the government’s rights regarding privacy and data surveillance; this documentary is not easy to follow along with. SIGINT, Prism, Tempora, SSO.. English please? Can you summarize what these are in applicable terms so I don’t have to perform a new Google search every twenty minutes? How are these programs being used to invade my privacy and communication and to what extent? Is it possible to summarize these programs in a way that the common man can easily understand? After viewing the documentary I felt frustration followed by a sense of hopelessness. Does the common man have the capacity to understand this topic and the capacity to debate this topic? If these programs and infrastructures take years to understand, how do we briefly communicate it so people can easily understand? Feeling this frustration and confusion helped me realize how challenging this was for Poitras to create and I applaud her for her work. This documentary did not come close to answering all my questions (obviously) but it did ignite an interest and curiosity in me to take the time to search for more information on privacy and data surveillance.
