Movie Review: Citizenfour

Citizenfour (2014)

Five Stars out of Five

R

Edward Snowden

Glen Greenwald

William Binney

Ewan McAskill

Director: Laura Poitras

Rarely if ever have I seen a movie, a documentary in the case of the 2015 Oscar winner for documentary feature - “Citizenfour”, raise as many troubling questions as Laura Poitras’ depiction of Edward Snowden’s actions in revealing the secret eves-dropping activities of the NSA. Since the day four airliners were sent crashing by terrorists into the twin towers in New York, the Pentagon in Washington DC and a field in Pennsylvania, America has changed, and not frankly for the better. How does a free people balance their national security needs with their privacy needs? Does the loss of privacy, even freely given up, mean a loss of freedom; are privacy and freedom necessarily linked in reality or at least in the minds of a majority of the American citizenry? Is it a crime to reveal secrets as a whistle-blower, when those secrets might endanger national policy, relationships and lives, but at the same time when those secrets might also reveal actions by the government that are expressly against the constitution, the bedrock of our laws?

Laura Poitras is an American film maker living in Berlin. She is a 2012 MacArthur Foundation Fellow and is well known for a 2007 movie that explores the effects of the US occupation of Iraq in 2006: “My Country, My Country” (also an Oscar nominee). As she notes in the introduction sequence of “Citizenfour”, she moved to Berlin following her 2007 documentary as she was systematically detained every time she entered or left the US – she had been placed on the DHS “watch list”. Citizenfour is essentially a three part documentary: in part one, Poitras shows that following the 911 attacks America passed the Patriot act and began a systematic collection of telecommunications data; she introduces William Binney, the NSA agent responsible for designing the Stellar Wind project to demonstrate how the data would be collected; in part two, she films and is occasionally heard asking questions of Edward Snowden in a hotel in Hong Kong, though most of the questioning is done by Brazilian-based American reporter Glen Greenwald and London-based Ewan McAskill (both reporters for the English newspaper, The Guardian); part three shows the efforts of some Hong Kong-Based human rights lawyers and others to get Snowden out of Hong Kong and ultimately to Moscow.

The first two parts of the movie are the best, with the interview of Snowden at times riveting and at times oddly disconnected as we watch for long stretches of time Snowden react to emails or news reports of his actions. In part one; we are introduced to William Binney. He states in an open forum that he was uniquely responsible for setting up Stellar Wind. This program was set up under President George W. Bush shortly after the 9/11 attacks; it authorizes the NSA to use data mining techniques on the phone calls, emails, financial transactions and internet activity of American citizens. It set the legal stage for President Bush and later President Obama to greatly expand the activities of the NSA – the activities exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013.

In part two, Edward Snowden appears on camera and is interviewed in Hong Kong over a stretch of eight days. Greenwald and MacAskill ask him questions regarding who he is; what his duties at the NSA were; why he is revealing this information; and what he hopes will come from revealing the NSA archive data. Snowden is revealed to be an intelligent and contrary to my previous opinion, a patriotic American. He makes clear in his occasionally hesitant voice that he believes the loss of privacy Americans are experiencing under the actions of the NSA is tantamount to a loss of freedom; that their actions are the stereotypical slippery slope. The NSA starts out using the data collection technique to combat America’s enemies, but would inevitably be used to control the American people. He demonstrates how the meta-data, the timing and locations of calls or emails can be used to link individuals with whoever they come into contact with. This can be used to track and monitor every citizen’s movements, but more to the point could be used to intimidate and cow everyone, certainly citizens if not their enemies. Snowden argues that this kind of data collection is illegal, immoral, and must be stopped; if not by his actions, then by the next whistle-blower that he hopes he is inspiring with his actions.

The documentary is expertly edited and written. Poitras is able to create a completely cogent explanation of a technology that is highly technical and raises questions that are very hard to answer. Poitras’ opinion on how the questions should be answered does not differ much from Snowden, it they differ at all. It is clear that Snowden, Poitras, and Greenwald have concluded that the behavior and policies practiced at the NSA since 9/11 under Bush and Obama are illegal and pose a serious threat to American freedom. In my opinion, they do not address the conundrum of what would the result be if America were to be the only nation not to practice such data collection. The movie makes very clear that the UK, for example has a program even more aggressive in data collection that the US. Are only the UK and the US using such techniques – this beggars the imagination? China and Russia, even lowly North Korea have been repeatedly caught using the internet to steal US secrets, to damage US interests or companies, and what else? How naive would it be for America to unilaterally stop using the surveillance techniques exposed by Snowden while the rest of the world continues on unabated? Finally, I do admire Snowden’s original desire to sacrifice himself or at least his personal freedom to expose the NSA’s activities; he states repeatedly his willingness to pay for his crimes. But the irony of ironies is shown in the final part of the documentary; we see Snowden’s increasingly nervous and at times frantic attempts to evade capture, and then to end up in of all places, Putin’s Russia. To say this is ironic is a gross understatement.

At times, I admire Edward Snowden, Laura Poitras and Glen Greenwald; I admire their determination, their sense of right and wrong, and their willingness to “fight the power”. But I keep coming back to the original question: where should the balance be between privacy/freedom and security? Even though “Citizenfour” is a movie every American should see, even though these questions need to be asked and discussed on TV and in the newspapers, I do not know the answer; I question whether anyone does. To be sure Fox News will have one answer, MSNBC, Bill Maher and Edward Snowden another. But who is right and what are the risks of making the wrong choice? For once, the push and pull of the US' two party-system of democracy gives me hope that the right answer will be found – but only because we have the freedom and (thanks to Snowden) the knowledge of the issue to discuss it.