Citizenfour: Global Surveillance

Is the price of safety worth the loss of privacy? In June of 2013 civil rights lawyer and journalist Glenn Greenwald published on The Guardian the first of numerous articles containing files he’d received from former NSA sub contractor Edward Snowden. These files revealed unbeknownst to the American public details about multiple global surveillance programs currently being used by the United States NSA to collect their private data. Greenwald’s speech on “Why Privacy Matters,” during the TEDGlobal 2014 conference was compelling & deeply insightful. By providing the audience with credible knowledge of his research in addition to the use persuasive emotional and logical reasoning, Glenn Greenwald effectively argues the importance of privacy.

Edward Snowden exposed NSA’s illegal surveillance in June 2013, this brought about controversial discussions inside America and all around the world. However, we stay oblivious how this thirty-year-old school dropout advanced to become one of the world's most noticeable critics of the government. Snowden is considered a hero and a patriot of the country, human rights movements like ACLU and Amnesty International advocate that Edward Snowden did great deeds to champion for the privacy rights of the citizens. (Greenwald, 2014) On the contrary, some people and the US intelligence consider Snowden a traitor to the state, the way he exposed the NSA was dubious and brought great risk to the international relationship between the US and other countries. Moreover, the state government accused him of breaching of information of the state.

Edward Snowden. This is a name that will be in the history books for ages. He will be branded a traitor or a whistleblower depending on where you look. Many Americans feel that Edward Snowden is a traitor who sold the United States’ secrets aiming to harm the nation. Others believe that he was simply a citizen of the United States who exercised his right to expose the government for their unconstitutional actions. It is important to not only know the two sides to the argument of friend or foe, but to also know the facts as well. My goal in this paper is to present the facts without bias and to adequately portray the two sides of the argument.

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.

Additionally, Greenwald’s usage of qualitative data provides an insight into the problem of surveillance. For example, Greenwald uses descriptive statements about intelligence and surveillance based on observations, interviews or evaluations. For instance, Greenwald states, “those state authorities have been assisted in their assault on privacy by a

It’s the summer of 2013; media outlets everywhere were plastering the words “NSA” and “Snowden” across their broadcasts. What did this mean for the typical citizen and who was Snowden? In June 2013 a man named Edward Snowden who worked with the National Security Agency (NSA) released over 1.7 million documents of NSA data to the public (“Edward Snowden”). There were many questions to be asked and an overwhelming amount of information and misinformation provided by the media.

Glenn Greenwald is a journalist, who has worked quite closely with the flies of Edward Snowden. In his Tedtalk speech: Why privacy matters, He reveals the extensive surveillance of the United States, which targets on private citizens. Greenwald has worked over 16 months on privacy matters. It is a question that has been debated globally for years. After Edward Snowden exposed the United States secret surveillance project, one of the viewpoints that people frequently point out: why we are scared if we do not do something wrong? It indicates there has 2 kinds of people, good people and bad people. Bad people who have reasons to avoid being surveilled such as terrorists, criminals, and law violator. This kind of people have fully reasons to care

True privacy in our modern age is nearly impossible. Although we have freedom of mobility (to travel nearly anywhere in the world), we are constantly watched. In Laura Poitras’s 2014 documentary Citizenfour, which takes place in 2013 when whistleblower and former infrastructure analyst for the NSA (National Security Agency), Edward Snowden released information that revealed the mass state surveillance of American citizens by the NSA after the September 11 terrorist attacks (or 9/11) as a method to detect terrorists. During an interview with American journalist Glenn Greenwald, Snowden states that

Government surveillance entails the subjection of citizens to arbitrary monitoring by the government thereby impeding their privacy rights. It is a subject that has attracted a fair share of criticism in the American political scene due to issues regarding the citizen’s confidentiality and the willingness of Americans to cooperate with this activity for security purposes. Therefore, this paper explores the legal basis of the privacy rights by making reference to the chapter on Civil liberties. An analysis of the video link is made to determine the integrity of the Supreme Court’s ruling on privacy and the justification of whether Edward Snowden is a gallant whistle blower or a traitor.

Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency (N.S.A) subcontractor turned whistle-blower is nothing short of a hero. His controversial decision to release information detailing the highly illegal ‘data mining’ practices of the N.S.A have caused shockwaves throughout the world and have raised important questions concerning how much the government actually monitors its people without their consent or knowledge. Comparable to Mark Felt in the Watergate scandals, Daniel Ellsberg with the Pentagon Papers, Edward Snowden joins the rank of infamous whistleblowers who gave up their jobs, livelihood, and forever will live under scrutiny of the public all in the service to the American people. Edward Snowden released information detailing the

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

The documentary Citizenfour is an eye opening first hand tale of Edward Snowden, a former contractor with the National Security Administration who leaked top secret documents to reporters. The leaked information has transformed the understanding of the American people of the government spying on everyone and anyone they chose to, without probable cause, warrants or constitutional standing. The implications of his actions though specifically unknown at the time, were calculated and deemed well worth his own personal risk to imprisonment, death or the relinquished rights of his United States citizenship.

Citizenfour is a documentary in which Laura Poitras starts receiving strange anonymous e-mails from a man that called himself by the name of "CitizenFour," that’s why the documentary is named that way. This anonymous guy said that he had evidence of illegal monitoring programs held by the NSA, CIA, GCHQ and many others agencies working worldwide. Months later after that, she and 2 guys named Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill (which are reporters) fly all the way to Hong Kong in order to meet with this anonymous citizenfour man. When they got there, they found out that the man turned out to be Edward Snowden. Throughout the rest of the film, Edward or “citizenfour” starts to reveal all the shocking information he has. This film not only brings to

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

As the Hollywood plot unveiled, Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, took sides with Edward Snowden to help him find asylum. Assange and his team have started negotiations with Icelandic and Ecuadorian governments for the political asylum that Snowden pursues . Julian Assange himself lives under political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since mid-2012, explained that Snowden had contacted them for