The Documentary Of Filmed And Directed By Laura Poitras-

It provides an optimistic vision of surveillance in which, like Truman, American’s will overcome the burdens of surveillance and remain autonomous anonymous citizens even in the face of increasing technological surveillance capabilities. It presents the ills of such a situation of excessive surveillance and the danger it poses. Truman is driven to the brink of insanity when he realizes that his life is not what it seems, but more than that, it is a moral issue. It is not right that Truman is unable to live a normal life and make his own choices. The audience, both within the film and watching the film, sympathize with Truman whose wife and best friend were both cast to play these roles. The film draws attention to its constructed nature and the impossibility of maintaining such a level of surveillance and control, even over a single subject like Truman, evident in his eventual escape. Person of Interest does not question the surveillance state, it utilizes it. The program’s pilot does not criticize the technological circumstances upon which the plot is founded. Instead, by blatantly utilizing surveillance, through The Machine, it suggests that hyper-surveillance is a necessary aspect of preventing and fighting crime. It cites 9/11 for

In 2013, Edward Snowden, a former NSA subcontractor leaked secret information about the levels of surveillance the NSA partakes in. "After only three months, Snowden began collecting top-secret documents regarding NSA domestic surveillance practices, which he found disturbing. After Snowden fled to Hong Kong, China, newspapers began printing the documents that he had leaked to them, many of them detailing invasive spying practices against American citizens" ("Edward Snowden"). The U.S. is now charging Snowden under the Espionage Act, and is attempting to extradite him ("Edward Snowden"). This situation is comparable with the confrontation that occurs between the Director and Bernard Marx in Brave New World, when the Director says of Marx that: "The security and stability of Society are in danger. This man who stands before you here has grossly betrayed the trust imposed in him. By his heretical views on sport and soma, by the scandalous unorthodoxy of his sexlife, and by his refusal to obey the teachings of Our Ford, he has proved himself an enemy of Society, a subverter of all Order and Stability, and a conspirator against Civilization itself" (Huxley 149). This passage displays how Marx's attempts to break himself from the mold created for him by the government and to share his opinion of his society's

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.

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.

A statement that truly stuck with me during the documentary was probably overlooked by most, but to me it struck a chord somewhere deep inside my heart. It comes toward the end of the documentary when Jill Stark is talking to one of the women in charge of her cochlear implant after the woman states the implant may not work. Jill discloses after that, “I’d just be happy to hear what the letter “S” sounds like.” All my life I have tried not to take things for granted. I know I am blessed beyond what many people will have in their entire lifetimes, but never once in my life did I thank God that I could hear words or know what the letter “S” sounds like. Most non-Deaf people think about such things and suppose they came “natural” to us. Jill is in a unique situation because she has now distanced herself and her children from the Deaf community due to stigmas attached to cochlear implants, something that also never occurred to me would be an issue until taking this class. I always thought a Deaf individual would want to hear if they had the option. There is such a vast number of things hearing people do not know or think about, and I often wonder if I had not taken this class that I would go to my grave never

In the documentary Laura, accompanied by investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian intelligence reporter Ewen MacAskill, travels to Hong Kong with her camera to interview Snowden for few days in a hotel. Snowden offered his inside information about illegal wiretapping practices of the US National Security

Edward Snowden was a former NSA contractor who leaked documents to reporter Glenn Greenwald. These documents revealed “detailed secret NSA programs and capabilities that have been and continue to be used to collect and store personal communications both within the US and abroad”. His document leaks led to many people to question their security. They have led to numerous investigations into the surveillance the U.S. is doing and violations of human rights to privacy and freedom of information. Nineteen proposals for reformation are pending in the U.S.

Essentially, the whole documentary is one big personal experience, since majority of the film is spent in Snowden’s Hong Kong hotel room, while he is hiding from the United States government. Here, Snowden and Greenwald, plan on how to continue their reporting, and how to make Snowden’s confession public. Through this, Poitras is able to collect what appears to be raw footage of Snowden’s reactions to the decision-making process, and eventually, the rest of the world finally discovering who he is. This not only, shows the audience what was going on in real time for Snowden, but also shows the complications with it, and how quickly the United States located him. By capturing Snowden’s real-time reactions, Poitras is also able to include a dramatic element to the film by simply showing how this

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

13th is a 2016 American documentary by director Ava DuVernay. The film talks about how the crossing point of race, equity, and mass incarceration in the United States. It’s titled origins from the 13th Amendment in the United States Constitution, which freed slaves, and prohibited slavery, that is unless as punishment for a crime. The film opens with Barack Obama saying that the US has 5% of the world’s population, but holds 25% of the world’s prisoners. In the documentary DuVernay argues that the practice of slavery has been disseminated end after the American Civil War through such actions like criminalizing behavior and empowering police to arrest poor freedman and force them to work for the state under convict leasing; suppression of African Americans by disenfranchisement, lynchings, and Jim Crow; Politicians announcing a war on drugs that weigh more intensely on minority communities and, by the late 20th century, mass imprisonment of individuals of color in the United States. She analyzes the prison-industrial complex and the now emerging detention-industrial complex, illustrating how much cash is being made

No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald is about the National Security Agency (NSA), an agency of the United States government. The primary purpose of the NSA is to gather and analyze information with the intent of preserving the national security and the safety of the citizens, especially from terroristic threats. In 2013, Edward Snowden, a contractor working for the NSA released classified information which showed that the agency was spying on Americans and collecting information without a warrant, which is against the law and Americans’ basic rights. Greenwald was one of the first journalists that Snowden had contacted when he was looking to leak the information. No Place to Hide is an account of all of the events leading up to, during, and after the news broke.

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

I found the movie Snowden to be shocking and eye opening. Watching the progression of Edward Snowden is interesting from when he is a die hard American to quite the opposite by the end. Snowden was almost like watching a fictional crime show where none of the situations could possibly be real. The fact that the government can spy on us doesn't seem to be real. I think people believe no one will spy on them, or they have nothing to hide, or of what importance are they to the government, but in reality each person matters to them because we all equal money. Seeing how the government tracks people makes those people tracking seem superior, as if they have the controls to a video game, and in some ways they do. The amount of conning shows me

In early 2013 a man by the name of Edward Joseph Snowden began leaking classified National Security Agency (NSA) documents to media outlets, which in turn ended up in public ears. These documents, mainly involving intelligence Snowden acquired while working as an NSA contractor, are mostly related to global surveillance programs run by the NSA. This has raised multiple ethical issues ranging from national security, information privacy and the ethics behind whistleblowing in general. The reach and impact of these leaks have gone global and have put in question the very government that protects us as well as the extent of the public’s rights on privacy. Various foreign