Citizenfour Film Analysis

The watch of the government should be to the limit of protecting the citizens, not spying on them, ”Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no color in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The black mustachioed face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house-front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own” ("1984 Power Quotes"). Citizens needs privacy in public, in private, and in mind. Big brother represents protection, but at the same time it is scary to think that he is “watching you”. Safety is crucial in today’s society, because there are many things that are harmful. ”The ACLU has been at the forefront of the struggle to prevent the entrenchment of a surveillance state by challenging the secrecy of the government’s surveillance and watchlisting practices; its violations of our rights to privacy, free speech, due process, and association; and its stigmatization of minority communities and activists disproportionately targeted by surveillance”("Privacy and Surveillance"). Invading the privacy of others can lead to many serious consequences. If one is trying to protect another, it is their responsibility to do it correctly. Privacy is

On June 6, 2013, The Guardian published a story about the National Security Agency's (NSA) secret Internet surveillance program, PRISM (Greenwald and MacAskill 2013). The story was based on documents leaked by one of the most successful whistle-blowers in American history, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The documents that Snowden has released up to this time have shown the NSA to be heavily engaged in the collection of personal Internet activity, bulk collection of telephone "metadata," and other forms of surveillance that have brought U.S. intelligence practices into question.

Described as a terrifying and eye-opening thriller, Citizenfour, a documentary directed by Laura Poitras, follows the case of Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee who revealed the truth behind the National Security Agency surveillance programs in the United States. Throughout the movie, we first-handedly experience the obstacles Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, a reporter for The Guardian, need to overcome, in order to share Snowden’s story and help him spread the information he leaked. Along those lines, the documentary begins with several encrypted emails received by Poitras from an anonymous sender nicknamed “Citizenfour” who later turns out to be Snowden. A few months later, Poitras and Greenwald partner up and meet Snowden in Hong Kong, where

Total surveillance. Complete obedience. Absolute authority. The world of 1984 scared me when I first read the book last year. Never before had a book made me think so deeply about individuality, society, and government. 1984, a manifestation of my nightmares, described a totalitarian police state of resolute submission. The horror came when I looked upon our own society, and Big Brother glared back at me. We live in a world where every phone call, every text, every search, and every email can be monitored and recorded by our own government. The National Security Agency, or the NSA, was originally proposed to monitor threats outside of the United States, but the NSA began domestic surveillance shortly after the horrific terror attacks of 2001. This cleared the way for warrantless, unlawful tracking of American citizens. Initially, the program collected only the data of high-risk individuals in America with direct links to Al-Qaeda. Now, however, government data collection has spread to millions of otherwise innocent citizens. Government surveillance is a direct violation of the privacy of American citizens that is dangerous, immoral, and unlawful.

Ever since the American public was made aware of the United States government’s surveillance policies, it has been a hotly debated issue across the nation. In 2013, it was revealed that the NSA had, for some time, been collecting data on American citizens, in terms of everything from their Internet history to their phone records. When the story broke, it was a huge talking point, not only across the country, but also throughout the world. The man who introduced Americans to this idea was Edward Snowden.

Thirdly, Greenwald combines quantitative and qualitative data through visuals withdrawn from the leaked archives of documents. To illustrate, he provides a chart from the NSA breakdown that quantifies the number of calls and emails collected for each country. “For Poland, the chart shows more than three million telephone calls on some days, for a thirty-day total of seventy-one million” (p.99). He uses the charts from the leaked documents as evidence to support his argument on the NSA’s unreasonable levels of surveillance on foreign countries. The integration of visuals into the book is vital for readability. A reader with no previous background in statistics can easily understand the explanations to reveal important patterns. Therefore, it strengthens his argument.

In “How the NSA’s Domestic Spying Program Works,” the author reveals that many of “aspects of the (NSA) Program were aimed not just at targeted individuals, but perhaps millions of innocent Americans never suspected of a crime.” The author develops his thesis by detailing a few examples of major telecommunication companies that share customer’s call records to the NSA (AT&T, Sprint) and explaining that programs were implemented to monitor the emails of citizens (“amounted to at least 1.7 billion emails a day”). The author uses examples of how NSA decisions were made without a “warrant or any judicial oversight,” in order to increase citizen awareness of how the NSA functions. The author uses a erudite tone to address the audience of Americans

Greenwald achieves his intended purpose that is to persuade and inform the reader that the actions of the NSA are beyond reasonable, and they should be held accountable. His tone is clear, concise, and confident. But, throughout the book, the reader senses a bitter tone in the writing. For example, Greenwald grants his belief on freedom of expression and journalism, he states, “Nobody need the US Constitution to guarantee press freedom so that journalists could befriend, amplify, and glorify political leaders; the guarantee was necessary so the journalists could do the opposite” (p.230). Hence, it means that Greenwald requires the reader to think and act in a way that would possibly trigger some sort of revolt against the violation a citizen’s

Greenwald, G. (2015). No place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the surveillance state.

In this film it essentially explains how our privacy here in the united states is being violated because of the Patriot act. ”they know where you got on the bus, where you went to work,where you slept,and what other cell phones slept with you”(edward Snowden) this act was placed in right after the nine eleven terrorist attack occurred, it was meant to help stop terrorists from doing there thing. Instead now they monitor everyone's phone calls, texts, and locations. As Edward Snowden said “arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy is no different than saying you don't care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.” he is right in every way possible because even though i have nothing to hide it just feels like i am constantly being watched.

In his VICE interview, Greenwald responded to the question on privacy from the U.S. spying by saying, “Privacy is essential to who we are as human beings. Having your privacy eroded are sometimes elusive for some people and yet incredibly profound. A society that thinks or knows they are always being watched will breed conformity” (2016).

Greenwald employs superlatives to evoke the responder’s sympathy for Snowden’s plight, describing him as a powerless freedom fighter, bereft of resources, hunted by “biggest and most secretive surveillance organisation in America” and the “the most powerful government on the planet”. By employing tricolon to assert that his silence would be tantamount to allowing “the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties”, Snowden persuades the audience to support his cause by portraying his adversaries as malicious and irresponsible. Greenwald’s low modality, anaphoric predictions regarding Snowden’s fate further prompt his audience to perceive Snowden as a vulnerable, stateless individual, persecuted by the powerful “Chinese government (who) might whisk him away…Or he might end up being grabbed and bundled into a plane bound for US territory.” Thus, both Levinson and Greenwald employ acts of representation which reveal the capacity for composers of narratives to represent political situations in ways which distort and manipulate the public’s perspective.

A world beyond what George Orwell could imagine has been created in modern society through the use of not only government surveillance, but also corporate and consumer spying where users are often unaware of spying.. 1984 is set in a neo-communist society where the government controls production of goods and spies on its citizens in order to maintain power. In the modern era, surveillance takes a different form. Often the methods for spying on citizens in the US do not involve a direct line from the NSA to the citizen’s home, it usually takes a detour through a commercial setting. By partnering with major companies such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon, government surveillance programs are able to collect far more information than could be gained by simply tapping telephone lines. This is more disturbing since many companies including Verizon, AT&T, Apple, and Amazon do not require a warrant to supply information to investigators, and do not notify users of data requests.

Privacy has endured throughout human history as the pillar upon which our authentic nature rests. Yet, in an age darkened by the looming shadow of terrorism, another force threatens to dominate the skyline and obscure the light of liberty behind promises of safety and security: government surveillance. As an employee of the NSA, Edward Snowden broke his vow of secrecy to inform the public of our government’s furtive surveillance acts, but does this render him traitorous? To answer this, we must first ask ourselves, traitorous to whom? When the very institution established to protect our fundamental liberties intrudes on our privacy from behind a veil of secrecy, should such informed individuals resign from judicious autonomy and

Citizenfour opens with Laura Poitras narrating an email that she received from the former NSA employee, Edward Snowden. The pair exchanged a few emails and ultimately agreed to meet in the film’s primary setting, Hong Kong, China. Everything fell into place during their initial meeting and they were joined by journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, so that Poitras could begin filming Snowden while he discussed the NSA’s scandals. In the midst of these interviews, Greenwald and MacAskill released news reports regarding this information- per Snowden’s request- ultimately causing the government to begin tracking him. Finally, the government catches wind of Snowden’s location, Hong Kong, China. His lawyers meet to discuss the possible outcomes of this situation, and ultimately, he and his girlfriend end up moving to Russia in order to escape persecution. As the synopsis of the