Edward Snowden Citizenfour Analysis
Citizenfour: The Free And Brave Edward Snowden
Nearly three years ago, in 2013, Edward Snowden – a former American National Security Agency (N.S.A.) contractor – leaked anywhere from a hundred to two hundred thousand classified documents, that proved the existence of massive global surveillance, including of American citizens as well as top world leaders, run by the USA with the active cooperation of many allied governments as well as telecommunication and technology companies.
Although the unconstitutional, albeit controversially legal and nearly-Orwellian programs were not a complete surprise, the extent and scope was staggering. The exposure was a big blow to the Americans and had them scrambling to understand the implications, contain …show more content…
national security, with there being a clear and present struggle between the need to prevent terror attacks and protect civilian freedoms. And that is the theme of “Citizenfour” (2014), a film by Laura Poitras – a highly regarded and multi-award winning director and producer of documentary films – which provides a by the minute account of the tense and dramatic conversations of Snowden with Poitras, Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, as they process, digest and understand him and his explosive content, all the while cocooned in a secretive hotel room in Hong …show more content…
And so, in lionizing him, we do him – and us – a disservice. He does not want us to put him on a pedestal but wants us to bring our state system down a notch, from where it cannot look us in the eye and lie the way the director of the N.S.A. did again and again, on oath, that his agency was intercepting online messages without court approval. The point is not that the state has the ability to see us naked in our own bedrooms, the point is that it is the Emperor that is naked, and whether we are willing to be the one to say it and be counted among the free and the brave.
That, more than anything else, is what Edward Snowden, aka Citizenfour, asks us.
The critically acclaimed, highly accoladed documentary that won an award for the Best Documentary Feature at the 2015 Oscars, is now available for viewing on
Nearly three years ago, in 2013, Edward Snowden – a former American National Security Agency (N.S.A.) contractor – leaked anywhere from a hundred to two hundred thousand classified documents, that proved the existence of massive global surveillance, including of American citizens as well as top world leaders, run by the USA with the active cooperation of many allied governments as well as telecommunication and technology companies.
Although the unconstitutional, albeit controversially legal and nearly-Orwellian programs were not a complete surprise, the extent and scope was staggering. The exposure was a big blow to the Americans and had them scrambling to understand the implications, contain …show more content…
national security, with there being a clear and present struggle between the need to prevent terror attacks and protect civilian freedoms. And that is the theme of “Citizenfour” (2014), a film by Laura Poitras – a highly regarded and multi-award winning director and producer of documentary films – which provides a by the minute account of the tense and dramatic conversations of Snowden with Poitras, Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, as they process, digest and understand him and his explosive content, all the while cocooned in a secretive hotel room in Hong …show more content…
And so, in lionizing him, we do him – and us – a disservice. He does not want us to put him on a pedestal but wants us to bring our state system down a notch, from where it cannot look us in the eye and lie the way the director of the N.S.A. did again and again, on oath, that his agency was intercepting online messages without court approval. The point is not that the state has the ability to see us naked in our own bedrooms, the point is that it is the Emperor that is naked, and whether we are willing to be the one to say it and be counted among the free and the brave.
That, more than anything else, is what Edward Snowden, aka Citizenfour, asks us.
The critically acclaimed, highly accoladed documentary that won an award for the Best Documentary Feature at the 2015 Oscars, is now available for viewing on